What Doesn't Happen
by riversrunthroughme
Summary: There was no happy ending. There was no fantastic life. Five years after the fact, the Doctor finds a phone box floating in space. The metacrisis isn't the same person they left on that beach in Wales... and neither is Rose. dark reunion
1. Reunion

**What Doesn't Happen**

**-  
**

_(There was no happily ever after.)_

_-  
_

What you had to remember about a Type-40 TARDIS was – given several hundred thousands years of existence and a couple owners who were just a bit too open-minded (or mad. If they were mad, that worked too) – they tended to get a bit…willful. Now obviously, this isn't on overt problem as a ship is still a ship and it can't do much without a pilot, but given the opportunity to be contrary, a Type-40 can and will pull a lookie-loo while it's residential Time Lord isn't paying attention. This is important to mention because in the whole of Time and Space just then, there was only one TARDIS left and that one TARDIS was old as hell, hella old, real damn old, old when the old farts on Gallifrey were a snotty little Time Lordlings old. Also, her residential pilot – while undoubtedly brilliant – was a couple pears short of the old gum tree and plagued by the personality of chronically distracted five-year-old. Also, he was currently arguing with a chronologically challenged immortal in a long jacket about which way Pluto was (someone had, apparently, nicked it while no one was looking) and couldn't be bothered to noticed the trending schemes of his living ship.

All these variables, when added, summed up this TARDIS thus: she was _particularly_ persnickety…and just a little bit sneaky.

Very casually, the Time Rotor started to hum and prep itself.

"I'm telling you," the Time Anomaly was insisting, "Planet snatchers. Grab whole terraformations and toss 'em into their sun like firewood."

A couple levers threw themselves this way and that in a certain fashion.

Her pilot was sputtering. "That's ridiculous. Also, you nicked that bit off a child's TV program."

The temporal regulators hissed and decompressed.

The Anomaly snickered. "You watch TV shows that Toshiko's ten-year-old nephew watches."

A couple dimensional buffer circuits buzzed online.

"Jack Harkness, I'm two inches from chucking you out the door and seeing how you fare in deep space…also did you know there really is an Irken Empire?"

"Heh…wait. What?"

Then the TARDIS threw herself into the Time Vortex and – because she was really not as young as she used to be – the sudden transference into the flux of reality hurled both her occupants to the floor around her center console and sent them banging into things. She sighed a little as she hurdled through the blinking whirl of the millenniums, flashing past the rise and fall of civilizations, the creation and destruction of whole worlds: she was so terribly out of shape these days. She felt positively flabby. (Well, no she didn't because she was a vastly superior sentient shape ship through whom the knowledge of the whole of Creation ran and, obviously, could not be 'flabby'. But whatever the equivalent of 'flabby' is on a pan-dimensional time machine that was how she was feeling just then.) She blew past a couple hundred years. Stopped. Then reversed back fifty and stopped in the year 37.4/Plum/96 just to the left of the Milky Way.

Obviously, her pilot was not pleased.

"Doctor, what the hell just happened?" demanded Jack Harkness from the floor.

The skinny Time Lord in question was already running around the console, flipping errant switches and checking the handbrake, running around some more, then rechecking the handbrake.

"I don't know! I set the handbrake," he said in utter bewilderment.

Jack rolled his eyes and got to his feet.

The Doctor reached up and knocked on the centre column. "What's the matter with you? Aye? We were in the _middle_ of saving Pluto."

"S'not like anyone really gives a damn about Pluto any way," Jack pointed out. "Not since that lot in the twenty-first century decided it was a moon."

The former Time Agent joined the Doctor in inspecting the various instruments on the control board, searching for something obvious like – for example – a jelly baby jammed in the gaps of some vital 'never press ever' button, or a shoe hanging off an important lever that should never be thrown. The handbrake notwithstanding, it was not unreasonable that Mr. Oncoming Storm might miss something like that. Meanwhile, the Doctor continued to frown up at his recalcitrant spaceship in that funny way that suggested he was literally waiting for an answer. Jack worked for years to pretend that was just the Doctor being bonkers, but lately he's come to be comfortable with the idea that ship was staring back at him. Besides, he admitted, it was endearing in a weird crazy Time Lord sorta way.

Jack went to investigate the display module to see where the TARDIS landed them, flicking the outside monitor on to take a look outside. He blinked a couple times. Then once more. When the image on the screen refused to go away, he looked up.

"Doctor, I think you should take a look at this."

"Jack. My TARDIS has just decided that a darting off to a random point in Space and Time is more important than Pluto."

"Yeah. Her and everyone else who _doesn't_ care about Pluto," said Jack impatiently. "So far as I can tell, Doctor, you're the only one who cares about Pluto. Now get over here and take a look at this _right now_ because I don't know what I'm looking at and if I'm looking at what I think I'm looking at then is a damn sight more important than Pluto. Doctor! _Now_!"

"Why doesn't anyone like Pluto?" muttered the Doctor, patting the TARDIS once more. "Alright, Jack." He bounded to the other side of the console and rubbed his hands together. "Let's see what we've got." He grabbed the display screen and pulled it around… and went completely impressively white. There was a good long five second interim where the Doctor just stood there looking terror-stricken and incredulous (long enough for Jack to get concerned) before he finally shook his head and stepped back from it, like putting some distance between himself and the image on the wave-screen might help somehow. He didn't say anything, just ran both hands through his hair to the back of his head and left them there.

There was a beat.

Another beat of silence.

"That's impossible," he said quietly.

"So I'm not crazy-go-nuts?" Jack clarified.

"It can't be."

"But it is."

"No."

"Doctor," said Jack flatly. "I think this requires some that innovative Time Lordy logic that doesn't include blindly denying the existence of the obvious. Now, tell me if I'm looking at what I'm looking at or if this is a very clever trick."

Because if it was a trick, it really wasn't very funny.

In the display screen image of the space outside, drifting like a toy set adrift in a bath of darkness and ten billion constellations, there was a floating fire-engine red police public call box, identical in every way but color to the TARDIS. It wasn't moving anywhere fast, if Jack were any expert (and he sort of was). The box looked as though it had seen the brunt of several dozen small hyper-fission cannons; great scars of blackened charcoal-black were burned across its sides, furrows raked into its bright paint. A massive dent in the top left corner had taken out the top left window above the doors. It was battered, banged up and generally all buggered to bits. The only sign of life was the street light on its roof, flashing a slow, two-four time rhythm. It drifted freely and silent, slightly askew through the gravitational eddies of the stars around it.

"Doctor…I think it's in trouble," Jack said hesitantly.

The Doctor continued to look as though someone had just popped out a pocket of anti-space and punched him. Jack weighed the benefits of slapping the Time Lord out of it versus waiting for him to resolve his blue-screen of doom. Luckily before he came to a decision, the TARDIS hummed impatiently at them. As though that were just the kick he needed, the Doctor darted to the other side of the console and started up a complex sequence of manual commands that Jack had never – in the several hundred years he'd known him on and off – seen him initiate.

"What are you doing?"

"Opening a two-way comm.-channel," he replied, flipping switches. "The TARDIS is picking up its psionic-wave distress call. Thinks that it's picking up another TARDIS and that's why it jumped." The central column chimed; a low deep humming sound that Jack had never heard before. The Doctor was yanking his tie loose in distraction, something he only did when extremely agitated. "I'm scanning for a…a certain frequency. It's exclusive only to a true blue Gallifreyan – ah ha!" The Doctor's grin was both of satisfaction and bitter, blackest disappointment. "No response. That _thing_, whatever it is, is not a TARDIS. No TARDIS would ever be grown not knowing that base-code. This is just a very clever phone-box in space."

Jack leaned against the console, staring very hard at his maniac friend. "But it's still in trouble, Doctor."

He sniffed. "Does look that way…" he agreed blithely.

"So why aren't we helping?" Jack demanded slowly.

"Because, Jack, my TARDIS – despite the very, very good reasons I'm giving her why it's completely _impossible_ – is still telling me there's another TARDIS," snapped the Doctor. Jack, as though threatened by a very, very temperamental nuclear bomb, stepped back slowly. "Every TARDIS was erased from the time-stream with Gallifrey, the Time Lords and everything else. They're gone. All of them. Ergo, that cannot be a TARDIS, but something is disguised very, very cleverly like a TARDIS and so intricately that a real TARDIS is falling for it and I'm not having that. No one should be able to do that. It's not fair to her or me." He brought his fist down on a stuck module and a light came on the paneling above it. "So we're going to figure out who's doing it and why. Two very important questions: 'Who?' and 'Why?' Will make me completely happy the moment they're answered."

"So…" Hesitation. "It's more important than Pluto then?" the immortal inquired brightly.

The Doctor rolled his eyes. "Yes, _Jack_. It's more important than Pluto." He spun a couple knobs as an afterthought and dashed to the door, snatching his jacket from the handrail and tugging it on over his shoulders. "Now, I've docked with her, it, the thing, whatever it is. We're presuming its not a terrible and obvious trap set for the very purpose and point of my capture, which it probably very likely is given my track record with Sod's Law and the way the universe works – _but_!" He shook a finger at Jack, grinning that manic megawatt grin. "Even if it _is_ a big, bad Time Lord trap, I know something they don't! Guess. Whaddo I know that they don't? G'wan!"

"How to not save Pluto?"

"Cheeky. I'm throwing you out over Wales, next pass over. No!" He bounced on his toes and looked very pleased with himself. "What I know that they don't is that if you're going to fake being a TARDIS so well, then you're gonna have to abide by TARDIS rules."

"And those are?" Jack loved this game.

The Doctor grinned. "Driver picks the music!" he sang with glee. And with that, the Time Lord dashed off through the doors and left Jack wondered how it was that someone this insane was the sole hope of many, many universes and planetary crises to come. "Don't doddle, Captain!"

The inside of the other TARDIS was…exactly like the inside of the Doctor's TARDIS if, say, the Doctor had accidentally lit the place on fire a couple times, knocked out all the ambient light, and gutted whole circuit boards of wiring from the ceilings like crazy black and rubber party streamers. Everything was dark. No lights save for a couple dim emergency wall lamps and the same low pulse of the distress beacon, which was likewise glowing rhythmically through the inert crystal rods of the Time Rotor. The Doctor was already crouched inside a hole under the control panel, messing with things. Jack stood still, realizing with an eerie sort of shiver that this ship, like the ship they'd just come off of, seemed to be watching him.

"Doctor…"

"Heebie-jeebies," he replied, non sequitur at its finest.

"Doctor, this ship is alive."

"Yes it is," said the Doctor, his head still lost under the console.

"What are you doing?"

"Quickly realizing that the universe is a terribly unfair place where bad things happen for no reason."

"Doctor…"

"Yeah, I know. That's obvious right? Shoulda figured that out centuries ago. But never mind that – _Ow_!" The Time Lord banged his head on the lip of the console. He stood up rubbing the spot furiously, but didn't seem inclined to let braining himself have an effect on his enthusiasm. He went on inspecting the control board, which – unlike everything else – was a good deal neater and more tidy than the controls on the Doctor's TARDIS; more uniform and new, though worn by frequent use and covered in... Were those post-it notes? "What I was saying before, Captain, is that any TARDIS that docks with another TARDIS initiates an automatic time-lock. It's a biological constant. Like, you breathing out carbon dioxide. They have to. It's automatic. And what I was assuming was that this ship is simply psychic enough and Time-saturated enough to trick my TARDIS into thinking its real. But if that's the case, she she'll treat this ship like a real TARDIS and time lock it. That kills engines, lights, weapons, defenses, small nuclear bombs, I-pods, everything up to and including clever Time Lordy traps. Dance to our tune."

The Doctor stopped briefly to rub a hand across the console; palm running up the weathered panel like one might sooth a hurt cat. His expression was no longer gleeful or angry…just sad.

"But she hasn't got any power to kill. She's used it all up getting here."

Jack finally made his way into the room properly, coming to lay a hand on the central column. It pulsed warmly under his touch. "Is it – she? – really a TARDIS?"

The time Lord didn't respond. He just stood there staring up at that identical crystal cylinder rising up from the heart of the machine, eyes lost in some spinning forever place that Jack Harkness could never touch. That terrible, lonely, hopeful but not daring to hope look that made Jack want to grab his friend and A: tell it would be okay and B: snog him out of it. (It should be mentioned, plan B was a possible solution for all problems almost all of the time, whether it made sense or not.) Either way, standing about wasn't getting anything done so Jack repeated, slightly louder, but in a gentler tone.

"_Doctor_."

He looked at Jack like he'd forgotten who he was.

"Is this ship really a TARDIS?"

"Yes." He sniffed, moved to the other side of the console in what was meant to be a busy manner, but came across restless. "It's a real TARDIS, Jack."

"You said it used up its energy? Did it crash? Fall out of the Vortex?"

"It could have." The Doctor ran a tense hand through his hair, face laced with pain. "I suppose…"

"But that's impossible. Even in the Vortex, even hiding somewhere in the universe, you would have known about it. Sensed it. Right? Time Lord Spidey-Senses. The TARDIS should have felt it at least. Where the hell did a whole other TARDIS come from? And how –?"

"I don't know!" the Doctor barked finally, killing the questions dead. Jack stopped. It was just then he noticed the other man was gritting his teeth, which was the Doctor translated version of freaking the hell out. The Time Lord went back to fiddling with unresponsive controls, more for a need to move than because it did any good. His tone was slightly ragged. "She's on the brink of death, Jack, she's dying. My TARDIS is trying to nurse her back to health, but... but I don't know." The Doctor just stared at the paneling under his hand.

"I'm sorry, Doctor."

"It's like the Master," he said without warning and Jack blanched. "For her, not me. For the TARDIS. If she loses this ship it's like I lost him: a split second where we aren't alone, where there's just one other being in the whole of Creation that's part of what we lost…" His eyes darkened. "Only it's just a second. Then it's gone. That's what it's like."

Jack didn't say anything.

"Impossible," the Time Lord huffed randomly. He rounded the console, ducking wires. "I say that a lot and set myself up for disaster with it on a regular basis. Shouldn't take me seriously when I say 'impossible'. S'not a good word, 'impossible'. S'almost as bad and 'Ooh, nothing could possibly go wrong' or 'At least it's not raining sulfuric acid,'" he chattered amiably. It was the flippant, rambling that meant he was scrambling, wheels spinning in four dimensions behind the handsome dark brown of his eyes. This wounded TARDIS had the Time Lord spinning in the wind. "When I said all TARDISes had been wiped from reality I wasn't wrong. It's true. They're gone. But I was assuming that _this_ TARDIS was a Gallifreyan TARDIS."

"…it's not?"

"No." The Doctor stepped back a bit, hands slipping into his pockets. "This TARDIS is brand new. It was grown after the destruction of Gallifrey. That's why it doesn't know Gallifreyian sub-harmonic communication base codes. Why would she need them?" His tone was mild, his expression blank. "There's no one else to talk to."

Jack shook his head. "Okay. Stop," he said. "I'm sorry. Rewind. You can grow a TARDIS off Gallifrey?"

"Sure," chimed the Doctor, abandoning his melancholy to go hunting down the side ramp for the galley. "You can grow 'em wherever you like, given you've got a graft off a living host TARDIS. But you need a Time Lord. Only a time-sensitive Gallifreyan can raise a TARDIS to adulthood – well, to adolescence – well, something like that. Whatever. Semantics." Jack followed the Doctor as he disappeared to the next level. "Point is this ship is full grown so that means…" He popped his head back up near Jack's feet to give him a warning look. "…it must have a pilot."

"A pilot…who stole a piece of your TARDIS," concluded Jack slowly.

The Doctor's expression was admonishing. "Or someone I give a piece of TARDIS to in the future. For all I know, I'm going to grow this TARDIS in the future and this is my own future TARDIS. Let's not jump to conclusions. I'm searching the lower decks. You watch the control room; make sure our prospective pilot doesn't try to jump ship. See you in a few." His voice faded as he descended downward. "And don't touch anything!"

"Does that include the prospective pilot?" he called.

"_Especially_ the prospective pilot!"

"Even if he's you?"

"_Double_ especially if it's me!"

Jack grinned and went to examine the console's collage of post-it notes. Most of them were completely incomprehensible scribbles, lines of funny swirly, wiggly symbols that meant nothing to the former Time Agent. Then there were a bunch written in English that said things like, "The fifth moon off Majora." and "Don't let the eggs go bad!!!" or "New shoes? Where to buy:" There were also a snatching of notes in French and ancient Greek that meant the new TARDIS wasn't translating and their TARDIS wasn't translating inside the new TARDIS. He supposed the two living spaceships created some kind of buffer, canceling each other out or some such. He'd have to ask the –

He looked up and the Doctor was standing the bridge.

He was wearing jeans and a Ramones T-shirt.

He was ginger.

Jack's first thought was: _'He looks good ginger.'_ His second was _'Oh shit!'_ because in the span it took him to think the first thought, the Doctor who was not the Doctor resolved his expression to one of great and angry determination. Then he sprinted – no, blurred – across the room toward the immortal, jumped on the center console, vaulted off it and tried to curb stomp Jack Harkness in the face. Jack ducked in time to avoid needing dental work, but this Doctor _wanted _to fight. The moment he hit the grating, he pivoted, reared back and axe kicked the former Time Agent in the chest, slamming him into the guard rail around the console with bone-bruising force. Jack found himself unable to breathe much less explain to the extremely irate looking doppelganger that he wasn't here to hurt him.

"Wait –" he wheezed. "I'm not –"

The pilot attacked him, drove a fist at the Time Agent that seemed to blink into existence two inches from his face. Luckily for clever Jack, he'd been traveling with the Doctor long enough to recognize when someone was bending Time to cheat physics and managed to twist away. He blocked the next hit, deflected a roundhouse then managed to bull through a blow to his shoulder and grab the pilot's slender wrist. Big mistake. The moment his hand closed on his arm, the wiry red-head twisted his back into Jack's chest, grabbed the offending hand and yanked him forward over his shoulder, thus throwing him an impressive distance into one of the coral support struts around the console.

Shit, never mind hurting the doppelganger, thought Jack through the black and white spots dancing about his in head. It was more a question of the doppelganger hurting _him_.

"How the hell did you come back!?" shouted the lookalike Doctor. Even dazed and on the floor, Jack was startled to hear a thread of hot fear in his voice. "Was it her? Did she do this?" he demanded frantically, without sense. His eyes weren't the Doctor's. They were the same shape, the same wild and unattainable intensity of emotion as the Doctor's, but they weren't his. His eyes belonged to someone else, but what they were – most vividly – was full of _terror_. "Answer me, was it _her_!?"

"You're confused," said a voice calmly.

The lookalike spun around and froze.

"You're not where you think you are. Calm down."

The real Doctor was, of course, standing on the other side of the console now. He had a hand on the rail, as though he'd just sprinted up the walk from below and stopped there to steady himself. His expression was a mix of parental austerity and some other strange wire of compassion wound through the back of the Doctor's eyes in a way that looked like understanding or hope or – to Jack's bewilderment – heartbreak.

The lookalike didn't look like a fighter anymore. To the contrary he looked startlingly and frighteningly fragile. He swallowed hard and took a step toward the Doctor, like an instinctive reaction, then stopped, unsure. The Doctor nodded slightly. The doppelganger, seeing that, seemed to go to pieces given the permission. He let out a sound that was like a sob or a growl and ran into the man's chest, grabbing him in a hug that was violent as it was desperate. The Doctor gripped his counterpart like he could turn to smoke and nothingness if he didn't… And then everything clicked and Jack knew exactly who the doppelganger was. He realized exactly whose eyes the lookalike had.

'_He's got Donna Noble's eyes.'' _

Somehow, impossibly, through all the oceans of improbability and 'not-very-bloody-likely' the feral ginger scrapper who'd nearly killed Jack Harkness, was the Doctor's impossible twin, the Time Lord/human biological meta-crisis fresh from the other side of reality. And he was a complete _mess_. He shook in the other's arms so hard his teeth were chattering. There were bloody scratches up his arms, his knuckles torn open, his clothes blackened with streaks of filth. He was breathing too fast, choking something, some strangled confession or a curse or a cry against the faded cloth of the Doctor's jacket, but the Time Lord just hushed him. He adjusted his hold on the impossible pilot, leaning back to look him in the face.

"It's alright," he insisted. "You made it. You're fine, now. We've got you."

"I thought –" gritted the Other Doctor. "I thought we didn't make it. I thought…"

"You thought wrong. You're both safe," the Doctor repeated. "Just relax. You're safe now, Doctor."

The meta-crisis shuddered. "Don't do that. Don't. That's not… not mine."

"I'm sorry," the Doctor said steadily. "What's your name? Tell me you name, okay?"

"I tried," he confessed desperately. "I tried everything. I did everything, but it was impossible. I couldn't become anything else and I'm sorry."

"It's okay," said the Doctor gently. "Just tell me your name."

"I don't…" protested the Other Doctor.

"It's okay."

"…Doc." There couldn't have been a more uncertain statement imaginable. "That's what the others called me."

"Doc," repeated the Doctor gently. "Okay. Doc, you're safe now. I want you to calm down.

He bit back a moan of despair. "I ran," he blurted. "I ran away, but I couldn't – She followed me. Rasallion, she _followed_ me, Doctor!"

Jack could see this wasn't going to end without a freak out, but the Doctor seemed to have figured that. He hushed his lookalike, pressing a hand to the side of his face, against his temple and murmured something.

Doc looked terrified. "Don't look," he begged, gripping the Doctors lapels. "Please don't."

"I wouldn't."

The other didn't resist the suggestion after that. He closed his eyes and went limp. Jack, having got to his feet at last, shook the last of his concussion from his head – note, this is very Jack thing to do and not everyone can do that – and came to kneel across from the pair of Doctors. The real Doctor was looking at the meta-crisis with an expression Jack didn't dare try to sort through, but it was at least one part sorrow and another part deep icy fear.

"What happened to him?" Jack whispered.

"I don't know," the Doctor said quietly.

"How can he be here? He was in another dimension. You don't cross those, you don't just…_hop_. Even with a TARDIS it's impossible. And for that matter where'd he get a TARDIS?!"

"We'll sort it out later, Jack."

"And why's he ginger?!"

"Jack."

"And why'd he kick me in the _face_?"

"_Jack_." Glare of impending doom. "Help me get him up."

"Doctor…" Jack grimaced at the second round of glaring. "I don't want to sound… The first thing he did, the very first thing, was _attack_ me."

"Jack. We'll sort it," he repeated. "Help me get him into the TARDIS."

- - -

-

- - -

They moved Doc to the Doctor's TARDIS and laid him down in one of the spare bedrooms where he slept like a dead thing. He didn't even stir while the Doctor checked his heart rate, temperature, blood-pressure ("You can do that by touch?" Jack demanded) and bandaged the skinned and bloody flaps of flesh torn open on his knuckles. When he was done, the Doctor pulled a blanket over him – a gesture that Jack had only ever seen him implement with a long gone London shop girl – and dimmed the lights as he left the room.

"Definitely him," muttered the Doctor once they were out in the hall, alone. "He's shut off every single one of his telepathic synaptic centers, but it's him."

"Why'd he do that?"

"Don't think he did. The TARDIS probably did it during the crash. S'why I couldn't sense him. Severe crash landing protocol calls for a TARDIS to render her pilot unconscious if maintained psychic connection would result in the possible death of the pilot. It's an outdated protocol. My Type-40 wouldn't even do that, but because his TARDIS is so young and he's so…" He grimaced. "…_abnormal_ it wouldn't surprise me that it would do something like that."

Jack whistled, shaking his head and running a hand through his hair. "Shit, Doc."

The Doctor looked up at him through his bangs. "Don't call me that, Jack."

"Oh, right." He glanced toward the room beyond where he could just make out a fringe of bright red hair sticking up from the tangled pile of the comforter. "You… sure we shouldn't move a bit? What if he wakes up?"

The Doctor shook his head. "He's inherited my Gallifreyian REM cycle," he said with a shrug. "He won't wake up for anything short of a kick in the ribs."

Jack eyed him oddly. "I didn't know that." A thoughtful pause. "_Anything_?"

"Don't even think about it, Captain."

"Too late," he sing-songed then sobered in that easy slip-side way that was so distinctly Jack Harkness. "Was he hurt in the crash or something? Because he acts like someone conked him with a brick, no offense. Also, he's punching people in the face. Namely me. What's going on?"

The Doctor pinched the bridge of his nose and sighed. "He might be suffering some telepathic frisson, psychic trauma from being connected with a young TARDIS during a crash, but I don't think so. Even an adolescent TARDIS wouldn't allow her pilot to feel that. Certainly not if he's part human." He lowered his hand to look Jack in the eye. "It's far more likely that he's blocking me on purpose and using trauma as a front…"

"Doctor, why isn't Rose with him?'

"I don't know." The Time Lord's face remained blank. "And I can't ask him. He was terrified that I might look into his mind to see what happened. Forcing him to anything would be a mistake and it's none of my business until he says it is." The Doctor leaned up against a wall, staring into a corner across the way with a worrisome level of intensity. "He's given himself another name."

Jack arched a brow. There was a melancholy in his voice that didn't seem deserving in the context. "Not really. Doc's not a far cry from Doctor is it?"

"Yes it is, actually," the Doctor retorted sharply. He paused. "I was wrong."

Jack blinked several times. "I'm sorry I think the universe just shuddered. What was that?"

"I was wrong," he repeated without humor. "All those years ago I left him on that beach with Rose and I was wrong. He's not me. I assumed that the regeneration, however strange, would still essentially be… I mean it was logical at the time and he was – Ah, it's not explainable in your language. I just thought that the name would stick to us both. It's why I said he was me and I was him. If the Doctor was both of us, then it would hold. It did hold. He was the Doctor the last time I saw him, he was me. I could feel him in my mind and he was me. But now the name's fallen off him and I don't know _why_." There was despair and frustration and exhaustion in his voice. "I left Rose with a stranger."

"That's not you're fault, Doctor."

"How is it not my fault, Jack? I made the decision. I could have chosen a different course, but I picked that one and it was wrong." He turned away. "For both of them."

"Doctor…"

But the Time Lord was walking down the hall. "It's fine. I've never done anything right by her. Why would this be any different?" Jack didn't manage to say anything before the other man rounded the corner. "I'm towing the other TARDIS into the Vortex. Could take a while. Keep an eye on him."

Jack was left standing the hall.

_- - -_

_-_

_- - -  
_

_They are all burning. The world is burning and the inside of his mind is on fire, is full of flame and crazy supernova detonations of heat and cold and he is crawling for the TARDIS doors. He doesn't know anything. Where anyone is, where they've all gone. (Except he does. He knows exactly where they've all gone.) He's clawing his way to his feet against the doorframe, stumbling through onto the inner walkway, staggering through. His thoughts are ash. His eyes can't see anything but streaks of light and blackness so deep he can't move for terror of it. His blood is roaring through him, pounding through him, beating against the walls of his fragile almost human body like it wants to get out of his skin. The TARDIS is singing her song of terror into his already shattered mind, seeking direction, seeking some sign that he's okay, any sign of her pilot but he's just curled inside her like a wounded animal, clenched around the pain that seems to burn from his centre out. He cries out blindly._

_He doesn't know what he says. _

_Something in his dead language. _

_Something like, "Help me."_

_Something like, "Run."_

_The TARDIS doors slam shut. He feels her come alive around him, feels Time and Space melt as she streaks like a meteorite through the fabric of reality. He feels her fear, her resolve, her desperation and that intense burning wire of connection strung like adamantine between them. He feels her dread mirroring his, the horror of the hunter in the Time Vortex behind them, coming up on them like a ghost in the darkness, hungry and pitiless and fathomless dark. Their thoughts are singular, unified in terror: Run. Run. Run. He doesn't hear her, because that's impossible, but if he could put words to the murmured impression of thought that whispers into his shredded awareness they would be these: _

'_I'll protect you. Don't worry.'_

_Then the world explodes. Reality evaporates. He knows her pain ripping through them, like a hot slab of fire sliding through the middle of their beings, before she cuts her connection with him. He's thrown against the console. He feels the floor fall away. Then he knows nothing._

_**Author's Note:**_

_Yeah, that's right. I'm a duplicate Doctor fan. Judge me as you will but be sure to tell me what you think. Criticism is always welcome. Clever reviewers are cherished and showered with attention. Flames make me laugh. It's good for my click that little green button and see what happens!  
_


	2. Repairs

**Repairs **

-

_(What you do when things need fixing.)_

-

The Other Doctor (Doc, as they were now calling him) was eating his way through his own weight in fish and chips and the other two were looking on in some consternation. Upon regaining consciousness, the first thing he did after he woke up (well, the second thing, if you counted him punching Jack as the first thing) was bolt for the TARDIS doors and rush to check on the red phone box. Then, after confirming that she was indeed alright and safely parked in an indiscriminant stretch of the Vortex, he proceeded to raid the Doctor's galley for anything and everything edible he could get his hands on.

The original Doctor was seated on the counter with a mug of tea, looking on in something like amusement and a little bit like concern. So far his clone had worked his way through a whole roast chicken, a bowl of potato salad, half a jug of tea, several bars of chocolate and was just then tucking into the second of three helpings of chips that Jack had stepped out to get.

"Thanks a lot. I was starving," he confessed gratefully between mouthfuls. "Got caught up in this _thing_ – mmm…" Chewed. Swallowed. "Sorry. S'thing and I didn't have time to get a bite. Then, of course, there's this batch of bloody pirates from Clorion-34 and they manage to destabilize the temporal inhibition matrix and all the food goes bad after the first time jump." He stopped to inhale an entire chunk of deep fried halibut and lick his fingers individually for the oil. (The Doctor shot Jack a warning look so intense, the former Time Agent aborted the words half way out his mouth and excused himself to get a cup of tea instead.) "I haven't had a proper meal since three days ago linear time," the Other Doctor went on, reaching for a bottle of Cola. He took a swig and grinned sheepishly. "Also, I eat when I'm stressed, so it's been a bloody nightmare. Wow, this is _good_." He grinned brightly. "I don't remember the last time I had fish and chips. S'brilliant!"

The Doctor sipped his own tea and let his ginger-haired counter part prattle on about food at great length.

Jack drank his mug of coffee in silence. Jack's black eye had been re-blackened this morning, when the Time Agent had tried, probably unwisely, to wake Doc up and been promptly rewarded with a really quite impressive left hook. There was no getting around it. For whatever reason, Doc didn't like Jack. He'd been civil enough to make a pot of coffee for the Captain, remembering apparently that the ex-Time Agent would always take a hot coffee over a cup of tea in the morning. But he was still not so subtly evading him around the kitchen like a rod of walking plutonium

"Why so busy?" the Proper Doctor inquired mildly.

"Universal imperative," said the Other Doctor. (Translation: _Duh_.) "Once I had a TARDIS it was a bleedin' free for all. Wars, interplanetary lawsuits, terraform demolition, alien culture clash, moons falling out of orbit – you name it, it was coming out of the woodwork. S'a lot harder to handle timeline repair with a new TARDIS. No tact. That's the thing. Don't know how many times she'd just take off for the nearest temporal trouble spot and dump me on it."

"Didn't have any help?" asked the Doctor cautiously.

"Since when do I need help?" retorted Doc with cheerful arrogance. "Do you have pretzels?"

Jack dug a bag from the pantry and tossed them over.

"Thanks." He popped it open.

The Doctor was looking – or rather he was trying to appear that he wasn't looking – at Doc's hands. They were the same hands. They had the same slightly delicate shape, long and clever and pale. They mimicked the original. But where the Doctor's hands belonged to a man who'd never touched anything but buttons, levers, and the occasional bicycle pump, the meta-crisis had hands like a soldier – rough and darkened by old scars He reminded Jack of the man he met as bombs fell on London, the blue-eyed warrior who'd died on Satellite Five.

"You sure you're not hurting yourself?" the Doctor asked for the third time, vaguely incredulous.

The duplicate just grinned crookedly. "Bigger on the inside."

"_Don't_," the Doctor warned. He was looking at their resident immortal.

Jack bit his tongue and took a position leaning against the wall pantry and didn't hide the fact he was perusing the new Doctor like a catalog for things he'd like to try on. The Proper Doctor continued to scorch a hole through the back of his head with those eyes. Doc just went on eating.

Up close, the meta-crisis looked less like the Doctor than they'd initially thought. He was still his spitting image, of course, but the two weren't identical anymore. Apart from being ginger – and the exact shade of ginger that Miss Donna Noble had been, by the way – the new Doctor looked _younger_, rather than older since they'd last seen him. They guessed it had something to do with being one big chunk of regeneration energy; probably did wonders for laugh lines.

Another thing: Whereas his Time Lord blueprint seemed fixed in a never changing state of skinny, the meta-crisis exhibited just a bit of notable muscle – most likely from all that bouncing about and kicking people in the face. Jack considered pointing it out, but he'd had his fill of being punched by the half Time Lord and didn't want to risk the Proper Doctor's copyrighted Glare of DoomTM. Doc continued munching pretzels.

"You have a TARDIS," Jack pointed out.

"Hole in one, Jumpin' Jack Flash. You come up with that on your own?" drawled Doc, dripping Donna Noble all over the kitchen.

"Oi," said the Proper Doctor, glancing between them. "None of that. But he's got a point, Doc. I don't remember giving you a piece of TARDIS."

The Other Doctor popped a pretzel on his tongue and shrugged. "Nicked it."

"Typical. Why are you lot continually stealing things off me?"

"Cuz you gots cool stuff?" Jack replied innocently.

"Right. Deal with you later. Why are you ginger?"

A fiendish grin. "Two way biological meta-crisis, Dumbo. Didn't stop just 'cause we had other things to do." Doc flicked a pretzel up and caught it on his tongue, chewed while answering. "I'm only just barely sure how it works myself, seeing how I'm a singularity – never been a thing like me before! – but I think it more or less boils down to me growing into my new genetics." He had a couple more pretzels and continued. "I was supposed to be another regeneration completely, but ended up a Doctor/Donna DNA cocktail instead. The regeneration energy used to create me drew on her phenotypic codons to rewrite part of my genetic structure and that went on for about, oh, three months. Human DNA didn't allow for a regular regeneration cycle, so it put it in slow-mo to compensate. Wizard, huh?"

"Doc," the Proper Doctor decided they'd danced around this long enough. He asked the Big Question: "What about Rose?"

The Other Doctor didn't look up from the pretzels.

The Proper Doctor lowered his voice. "Where's Rose?"

His duplicate continued to study the contents of the bag with great interest, face a mild mask that said nothing.

"Doc," said the Doctor sternly.

He looked up from the bag. "Rose is fine."

The Doctors locked eyes.

"Fine?" The Proper Doctor repeated.

"Fine," the Other Doctor affirmed, but there wasn't much enthusiasm behind it.

He was probably lying. No, he was definitely lying. Jack didn't like it. It was impossible to tell what the Doctor thought, but the duplicate was ducking questions and he wasn't even _trying_ to be subtle about it. Jack waited for the Doctor to really grill his lookalike. Rose was involved after all, so how could he let that go? He should have been shaking the funny red-head until he forgot how to talk Doctor and just told the truth. The Doctor in interrogation mode was a phenomenon to behold. A Force of goddamn Nature. That's what Jack expected. _This_ is what happened:

"Well, Doc," chirped the Doctor. "If you're done eating me out of house and home, let's get your TARDIS up and running again, shall we?"

Jack coughed up his coffee and cursed.

Doc's eyebrows shot up. "You… Just like that?" he inquired suspiciously.

The Doctor shrugged. "Why not? I'm sure you're smart enough to say anything that needs saying." He arched a brow. "Right?"

Doc answered slowly. "Yeah."

"Well, go on," the Doctor said, hooking a thumb toward the door. "Shift!"

The Other Doctor grinned like Christmas, abandoned the rest of the pretzels, and just as quick as you like, both Doctors were bounding out the TARDIS, chattering away about temporal flux drives and the various linear probability distortions caused by feedback on the inertia buffer system… or something to that effect. Jack picked his jaw up off the floor eventually and followed them hastily outside, already calculating the possible destruction two Doctors could wreak upon the whole of Space and Time. While it was a worrying sum of collateral, he had to confess: This was so much more interesting than Pluto going missing.

Repair work began immediately.

- - -

-

- - -

Rather out of the blue, the baby TARDIS started singing to itself. Jack, not understanding at first, stopping unscrewing the bolt he was working loose and frowned. Not a second later, the Proper Doctor slammed the back of his head against the lip of the console again. Doc didn't seem to notice. He just patted the Time Rotor absently and kept working. Rubbing his head furiously for the second time, the Doctor's much frazzled head popped up, looking around the console room in awe.

"This TARDIS is uninhibited!" the Doctor shouted.

Doc blinked, surprised. "Oh… yeah. It is."

"But that's brilliant!" The Doctor's grin could have powered small cities. "Bonkers, of course. You're stark raving mad, should be strung up by your toes and tried for madness."

The Other Doctor responded by smacking his lookalike upside the head and not looking up from the open circuitry he was messing with. "Can it, Time Boy, you'd have done the same."

The Proper Doctor smacked him back. "I would not! There hasn't been uninhibited TARDIS in eons. That breaks every rule we have and then some. If there were still a Council to get angry with you, you'd be charged as a lunatic traitor and… I dunno, bad things would happen. Really, really bad things. There's no precedent, because no one's ever been thick enough to grow a natural TARDIS and try to pilot –" He stopped, mouthed something to himself, then launched into a second tangent. "Is that how you managed to grow a TARDIS so fast? That's impossible."

"Clearly not if you cheat."

"You can't cheat biology."

"Sure you can, skinny boy. You just need a little innovative creativity, a pie-tin and alotta pizza," he said a bit smugly. "Now, quit gaping and help me move this panel."

"You did not grow a TARDIS in a pie-tin."

"Wanna bet? Used an anti-plasmatic coagulase solution to shatterfry the plasmic shell…"

"…adjust the temporal distributor to a foldback harmonic of thirty-six point three…" continued the Proper Doctor, in awe.

"… then you increase the growth rate by the power of fifty-nine!" they chorused at one another.

"Brilliant!"

"Molto bene!"

A high five was exchanged and Jack Harkness thought a couple things that were forbidden in thirty-eight different galactic jurisdictions.

"Sorry for being – you know – not full Time Lord brains, but what's an uninhibited TARDIS?" Jack demanded.

"A TARDIS grown without any Gallifreyan conditioning," answered the Doctor in delight. "If you cut out the inhibition period that reduces the growth period to virtually nothing. S'like growing a wild time machine. Brilliant!" Then he seemed to realize he was the responsible adult present, cleared his throat and glowered at this twin. "Which is extremely dangerous and reckless and _forbidden_ for lots of good reasons. An uninhibited TARDIS has no limitations or parameters. It could do almost anything it likes and that's to say nothing of the accelerated the growth on this one. I'm surprised the both of you aren't dead or stuck in the Time Vortex or blown a whole in the Space Time Continuum – given that's fairly easy to do these days, but still." He frowned. "Is that what happened? You had a system malfunction and the TARDIS ripped through the dimensions?"

"No." The Other Doctor didn't look up from what he was doing. "I actually don't know what happened."

"Were you piloting?"

A frown. "I couldn't. She was in emergency protocol eighty-eight."

"Emergency temporal shift…" muttered the Doctor. "But that's… You were hurt and something was coming after you."

A nod. "She took over when I couldn't. Then improvised when the temporal shift didn't work."

"It didn't _work_?" Jack demanded. An emergency temporal shift was the last and most thorough way to run, dangerous as it was erratic, it threw you from one end of the universe to the other, from one end of Time to the other. It was what you did when a fate worse then death was behind you. When hope was a nonexistence. When escape was impossible. Jack felt a chill crawl up the highway of his spine and send coils of cold across his shoulders. "What was chasing you?"

A shrug. "I never saw it."

Doc kept right on working while his blue print and Jack Harkness shivered at all that was left unsaid.

- - -

-

- - -

It took them about a week to get the other TARDIS up and running. The time capsule was so young, so dangerously inexperienced, it was having difficulty regenerating its damaged machinery. Whereas its mother ship – literally, its mother ship – had suffered a similar disastrous crossing of dimensions, all it took was a breath of Time from her pilot to get her up and running again and within hours even. Her daughter, however, was not so skilled in the art of self repair. She took her wounds and bore them like badges (much like her pilot, it might be noted.) The new TARDIS was battle scarred and quirky, full of underdeveloped circuitry and missing apparently integral pieces that made the Proper Doctor go into fits. Doc just rolled his eyes and explained how they circumvented the missing part.

They fell into a comfortable routine.

Doc stopped twitching every time Jack walked by and even attempted polite conversation (Example: Doc: "Coffee?" Jack: "Yes, please." Doc: "Pass the salt." Jack: _passes salt_) and they managed to cope with one another. The two Doctors became increasingly more chummy, alarmingly so, but managed in superb Doctor fashion to say absolutely nothing about what was troubling either of them. It was almost too easy: The both of them mutually enabling the other to evade all the tough questions and pretend that the joint task of restoring Doc's TARDIS were the only trouble at hand. A handy and tricky distraction demanding all their attention. They went on blithely ignoring the quivering ether, packed now to the brim with unsaid questions and yet to be demanded answers.

Two double-time, fast-talking, technobabble, word-magicians with big fat secrets.

Fan-freakin'-tastic.

Jack had the presence of mind to be a bit impatient with them… also grumpy.

First Pluto pulling a runner (which, admittedly, hadn't been that alarming) now a TARDIS and a Doctor clone, who was – apparently – a couple cake rolls short of a picnic. Jack sighed. He wanted to be back in Cardiff, bickering with his team about what alien tools went in the Vault. He wanted to flirt indiscriminately with them when things got boring. He wanted to irritate Gwen into a fit so she hit him with rolled newspapers. He wanted a cup of Ianto's coffee, which was always just perfect. That's what he wanted.

He didn't want to beat answers out of two reticent Doctors with a metaphoric rubber hose. He was also getting sick of having to state the obvious in lieu of the Proper Doctor just confronting it head on. When Jack accidentally tapped Doc too sneakily and was thrown into yet another wall, he decided it was time to say something.

"He's a solider, Doctor," said Jack flatly the next time they were alone. "You do know that right?"

They were going back to the proper TARDIS to get tools. The Other Doctor was in his own TARDIS, recalibrating instruments half destroyed in the crash, dismantling things, then rebuilding them with a jerry-rigged sort of sonic screwdriver. It was apparently only semi-sonic and built cleverly out of toasters. Jack only noted that there was at least one visible setting on the little machine that very much resembled the Master's laser screwdriver.

"Just because he can throw you around doesn't make him a soldier, Jack Harkness." The Doctor seemed unimpressed by the seriousness of the immortal's observations. He just hefted an alarmingly large bag of assorted gizmos and useful looking knick-knacks and looked dubious. "Throwing you around isn't that hard."

"You don't think you're being just a little bit biased?" Jack pointed out, grabbing a box of spare paneling sheets and a molecular welding torch, "I know he's you and all, and maybe throwing me into walls doesn't have a direct correlation to being a fighter – I've had girlfriends who did that – but growing a TARDIS, blasting through the walls of the dimensions, then manipulating you into helping him _does_ make him dangerous."

"You think he's manipulating me?" The Doctor sounded more intrigued by the idea than worried.

Jack rolled his eyes. "_Yes_."

"No chance that he's legitimately and honestly terrified and I'm helping him because I want to then?"

"Of course you do. Look at him. He's really got that whole kicked puppy thing going for him right now and you're buying it up. In case you forgot, the reason you ditched him in the first place was because of how dangerous he was."

"I also said," retorted the Doctor, eyes full of sudden steel, "that he couldn't be left on his own."

"Then why won't you ask him what happened to Rose?"

"Because," he snapped. "It's his business. Not mine. Not anymore.Now, I'm serious, Jack. _Leave him alone_."

Jack sighed. "I'm just saying. Be careful, Doctor."

The Time Lord winked in the most charming fashion possible and left his TARDIS to go help Doc with his, whistling as he stepped out the doors and crossed the green South London lawn they were parked in then vanished into the other police box. There was the brief sound of enthusiastic and immediate conversation and Jack stood there on the lawn with the proper TARDIS and tried to figure out what he was feeling and, more importantly, what the hell Doctor was thinking.

There still hadn't been an interrogation, a confession, a long exposition. No body knew what was going on still, and what's worse the Doctor seemed to be okay with that. He just went on his merry way, doing repairs on a shiny new TARDIS and – to Jack's extreme consternation – chatting away in with his duplicate in a completely friendly and carefree fashion. Laughing and repairing the battered space ship in amiable good humor.

Jack didn't want to say the Doctor's judgment was clouded…

He heard them intermittently murmur to one another in Gallifreyan as they worked.

Jack worried a bit.

- - -

-

- - -

Occasionally, Jack would walk the halls of the TARDIS at night (the proper TARDIS mind). It was habit that stemmed from his now half a century long inability to sleep properly due to the fact that death is – in some shallow ways – a state of consciousness closer to death. It felt a bit like dying, which never got to be a better feeling no matter how many times he did it. But it was on such an occasion he caught what could have been the big exposition.

The Doctors were in one of dens the TARDIS seemed to stow around, a small one with big couches and a small stove to put a kettle on. The warm smell of tea made the former Time Agent think they were having a late night snack. He looked in to see Doc sitting cross-legged in an armchair, a hand over his face.

"Don't ask me."

"I won't."

The Proper Doctor was seated across from him, back to the door so Jack couldn't see what his eyes were like or the way his mouth was set, but he didn't really have to see to know that the Doctor's expression was gentle. Doc looked up between his fingers, grimacing.

"It's just my head, you know?" It sounded like a lie.

The Doctor shrugged, letting it slide. "It was a hard crash."

"I just don't think I can do something like that. It's just been me for all this time. It's weird for me. I've forgotten how."

"That TARDIS _speaks_ to you doesn't it?"

Doc looked away. "I… I needed some way to teach her. There wasn't anyone else and I'm not really a Time Lord."

"Stop saying that."

"I'm not though."

"You are up here," said the Doctor, tapping his twin on the forehead. "You think like one and you feel like one. That's Time Lord enough to be burden to anyone. That's suffering enough."

Doc looked at the Doctor with those strange green eyes and they held a wellspring of dark waters, oceans flipping and turning endlessly and forever, stars thrown out into the high infinity of the dark oblivion. Then he looked down again and rubbed his scarred hands together, fingering the dark lines worn into his skin, a split finger nail, a deep whiplash of angry red skin across the back of his hand like a wire of old fire.

"I'm sorry, Doctor."

"I shouldn't have left you there. Universal imperative. I didn't think."

The Other Doctor laughed. "If you weren't right about what I was, then the universe wouldn't have used me like that would it? Jack's right, you know." He lowered his voice. "I can't be left on my own."

"Maybe."

"Definitely." Doc looked away, then back up again. "Is she going to be alright, Doctor? Her voice is so faint…"

"She'll be fine."

"Are you sure?"

"You're going to be okay, Doc. Both of you. You're going to be fine."

"I just… it's the same. Again. She's all I've got. I was so sure it wouldn't be like this. We were so sure…"

The Doctor reached out, looped a hand around the back of the other's head and gently pulled him forward. He leaned down and brought his face close, tipping his forehead against Doc's and in that instance, Jack felt like an outsider. Nearly an eon in age, having known every physical intimacy possible with nearly every species… and Jack Harkness had to look away. There was too much shared pain between them, an impossible gulf of it threatening to swallow them whole. And in this one fragmentary moment, looking down into the fathomless dark, they grabbed out at one another like lifelines to buoy each other up. They gripped tight. Two singular things in the whole of Space and Time.

"I forgive you," says one of them. It occurred to Jack he had no idea which one it could have been.

- - -

-

- - -

"Can we visit Martha Jones?"

The question was so random that both Jack and the Doctor looked up from the New New TARDIS console in surprise. The Other Doctor blushed red as his hair.

"I just…want to see how she's doing," he explained awkwardly.

Jack decided now was not a good time for a bawdy Martha/Doc joke and glanced at the other Time Lord.

The Doctor blinked then cleared his throat. "Yeah. Sure," he said, semi-casually. "I've been meaning to drop in on her. I suppose it wouldn't hurt…"

Doc brightened immediately and resumed working with a slight bounce in his step that was just visible enough to be sort of funny, but it was accompanied by such a strange kind of desperation in the initial question that the Proper Doctor watched him carefully thereafter. The connotations in his twin's behavior were ugly, but ambiguous. That bad things had happened was a given, but what exactly those things were remained unclear and buried in the half-Time Lord's silence and false chipper cheer. Basically, he was doing what the Doctor would do.

He seemed stable at first, second and third glance. But by comparison, so did the Doctor, and the Doctor wasn't arrogant enough not to admit to his own madness. The craze that ate up his dreams when he was allowed to have them, the wildness that kept him running, running, running like he didn't dare stop through the whole of Time and Space. No, they were both creatures of a chaotic mind, no doubt about that. The question posed was this: How much of Doc's madness was inherited and how much was new? How much of his insanity – the hot nuclear reactor of erratic hysteria in his eyes – was accrued in the parallel world? What's more – Why? How? And where was Rose?

Doc asked after other companions. Always casually, always back-handed and never directly, which was a sure sign that their well-being of a first priority concern to him. What did that mean, if anything? Had Rose rejected him and left him alone? Had he lost himself to the loneliness, perhaps? Lost friends to disaster? Or was it the worse possible possibility? Was Rose Tyler dead?

"All systems are green!" Jack said triumphantly.

"Fantastic!" cheered the Other Doctor. The whole ship vibrated with the responding affirmation, exuding a sort of cocky 'it-was-just-scratch-really' attitude. Her pilot rolled his eyes and knocked a fist against the console. "Oi! Cheeky little brat. So, Doctor…" The half Time Lord threw a lever and the whole ship sang, thundering alive in a joyous raucous way that the original TARDIS did not. His grin was both like and unlike the Doctor's. "How'dya feel about sitting shotgun for once?"

It was such a funny thing, that question. The Proper Doctor stood there, considering the absurdity of it – something so simple as letting someone else drive, that had been a virtual impossibility for so long. So very, very long… – he crossed the room and threw himself down on the bolted sofa by the console. They grinned at each other. (Jack felt his heart constrict in a kind of unreasonable fear for them. He didn't know why.)

"Fantastic," said the Doctor.

"Martha Jones?" inquired Doc eagerly.

"Martha Milligan, now," replied Jack.

The Other Doctor's expressions changed. "Of course she is."

Doc's TARDIS hummed in that familiar way then faded from reality. The police box left sitting on the lawn seemed – if such things were possible for semi-sentient pan-dimensional time machines – proud as her daughter ship took flight.

_**Author's Note:**_

_I have no clue in the starry skies where this is going, but if your reading out there and you'd like to find out with me, please feel free to leave an encouraging chunk of feedback saying so or, contrarily, a raging flame outlining all the reasons I should cease and desist immediately. I really don't care as long as you're clever about it. ^_^ I hope you're having as much fun reading as I am writing. Tootles!_


	3. Runner

**Runner**

-

_(What you pull when no one's looking.)_

-

"_Run!" Martha screams. "Run! Run! Run! She's coming! John, get him out of here, she can't catch him! Get him out of here!"_

"_We're not leaving you!" he's shouting, wrenching at the chains bolting her to the wall. Blood wells between his fingers, but he can't feel the metal biting through his skin, pinching the fragile membrane open and slicking his grip with coppery red. "I'm not letting this happen. This can't happen."_

_John has his arm; is pulling him away from her, leaving her. "I'm sorry, Martha."_

"_NO! We're not leaving her!"_

"_There's no time, Doc! We don't have time!" _

_There are ragged edges in John's voice, a shattered kind of resilience that he hates with an intensity that surprises and frightens him. The Time Agent has him by the elbow, but he twists out of it and holds her desperately. She's crying. She knows they don't have time. They need minutes they don't have to get her free of the dead-lock cuffs. He grabs her up, cups her face, presses his forehead to hers and pours every ounce of how much he loves her into her head, every smile, every laugh, every blitz of adrenaline and moment of blind trust. He kisses her and her mouth tastes like saline and old lip gloss and adrenaline and every chemical of fear. She tastes like the woman who has and will lose everything – everyone – because of him. _(And I'm so sorry. I'm _so_ sorry.)_ This is all he can give her. Just this. She whispers her forgiveness against his lips and holds his hand one last time, like the first time, and in an echo that breaks his heart she says:_

"_Run."_

_John grabs him and yanks him away like he knew he would. Martha takes his handgun and he doesn't know who the bullet is for. Then the former Time Agent and the half Time Lord run. They leave Mrs. Martha Milligan behind. They leave her behind._

_They leave her behind._

---

-

---

"Whaddya mean you didn't find Pluto?!" demanded Gwen loudly.

Jack grimaced and felt twin curious Time Lord eyes on his back. "Sorry. We got distracted."

"Distracted? From a whole missing bloody planet?"

"Technically it's a moon," came Ianto's voice faintly.

Gwen shushed him with what sounded like a thrown shoe. "Jack, everyone's going mad down here. UNIT is riding us to come up with something and so far there's nothing."

"Well," Jack said pragmatically, tucking his cell more comfortably under his ear. He rang the doorbell and stepped back. "It's not as though we own Pluto. Sure, we've sent probes and taken pictures but we don't claim other countries by throwing cameras at them do we? If someone else comes along and nabs it out of space then we can't very well complain much. S'not like it's hurting anything exactly."

"Jack, what's so important that you're ditching Pluto?"

"Who cares about Pluto?" came Ianto's voice from a separate line.

"Hi, Ianto. I'm not ditching Pluto; we're just temporarily putting it on hold until we sort something out."

"Oh brilliant," said Gwen the exact moment Ianto said, "Sound's good to me."

"S'just a moon," Ianto reiterated.

"Say that again, so help me I'll stuff that tea-kettle up your –"

"I'll get back on it as soon as I'm done with this other thing."

"What other thing?" demanded Gwen in exasperation. The front door swung open.

"Martha!" said Thing One.

"Hullo!" said Thing Two.

"OH MY GOD!" screamed Martha Milligan, formerly Jones.

"Domestics," said Jack. "Talk later." He hung up and grinned. "Hey, Martha. Long time no see."

---

-

---

Tom Milligan was a well-liked and good looking pediatrician fresh from his not so relaxing sabbatical in South Africa. He'd done his stint in medical schooling the way he did everything – with a mixture of sage-like patience, quiet dedication, and a firm ardor to having a good time when he wasn't doing the former two. Female co-workers described him as a bit rugged, with his dark curly crop of hair, excellent jaw line, lazy five o'clock shadow. Male co-workers found him amiable and easy to get on with and usually envied him with good humor then went out for a beer with him on the weekends. In addition to this, he spoke fluent French, bastardized German, and could put on a perfect Scottish accent. (This was important because he'd studied briefly in Scotland and loved football and needed to play native to prevent getting steamrolled into the ground by over-enthusiastic Scot fans during the season.)

He'd met Martha Jones in a decidedly strange way. She'd walked up to him on his break, introduced herself and said, "I know this sounds strange, but I feel like I've met you before. How 'bout a cuppa so I can work it out?" Well, coming from anyone but a gorgeous girl, that would have sent him running for sure. But he'd said yes and found her brilliant and, strangely, familiar and trustworthy in way he couldn't explain. After six months he proposed to her. They'd been married four months now and had since figured out _exactly_ why she felt so right.

He'd fallen in love with her once already.

That morning, Tom ran out to get some groceries. He'd drank all the milk during his midnight snack the night previous and he came back to find three strange men in his house. One of them was Jack Harkness, who'd made Tom nervous the first time they'd met because he was gorgeous in that classical superhero comic book fashion and he flirted shamelessly with everyone, Tom included… on his wedding day. He'd since then learned to stop worrying about it.

The other two men in his kitchen were strangers. They were both tall and skinny and had rather alarmed looking hair. One wore a pinstripe suit and an overcoat, the other in jeans, T-shirt and what looked like a motorcycle jacket. The first was brunette, the second ginger, but other than that they were almost perfectly identical. They looked up at his entrance and at the same time exclaimed, "Tom!" with an enthusiasm that seemed to indicate Martha had been talking about him.

"Hullo?" he said, puzzled.

Martha spun about. "Tom," she said quickly, coming to meet him at the door.

He met her halfway with the kiss and a puzzled look. "'Lo Martha. Having a party without me?"

"We'd never do that," protested Jack. "How are you Tom? You're looking very good, if I might say."

"_Don't,_" chorused the twins furiously.

Jack rolled his eyes. "They just don't understand our brotherly report, Tom. Ignore them."

"First, I'm doing well, thanks, Jack. I've been working out. And secondly, it's not my policy to ignore guests, however unexpected. Hi, I'm Tom."

The first twin in the pinstripes greeted Tom with an affable grin, shaking his hand warmly. "Nice to meet you finally, Tom Milligan. Brilliant, even. I'm the Doctor."

Tom blinked. "_You're_ the Doctor?" He immediately redoubled his hand-shaking efforts, laughing. "Blimey! Hi. Wow, I've heard _so_ much about you."

"Aww, well, I promise only most of whatever you've heard is true."

"Oh, and I saw you at our wedding," said Tom flippantly.

The Time Lord froze like a deer before a semi-truck.

Martha looked outraged. "What?!"

"Are you…sure?" The Doctor sounded desperate.

"Definitely," said Tom. "I remember the coat. You were standing in the back during the ceremony. You left just before it ended."

Martha spun on the Doctor. "You were there!? You were there and you didn't say anything! You – you -!" She made a sound of rage and helpless resignation and cornered the unfortunate man against the fridge. The Doctor looked helplessly to his companions for aid, but was met with dual grins of zero sympathy. Martha seethed. "You absolute idiot! You should have come up and said something. I wanted you there, you nimrod! I invited you and everything! Jack was there! Bloody _Torchwood_ was there! Most of UNIT was there and I thought you'd skipped out! Gah! You're unbelievable and don't you dare try to puppy-dog your way out of this one, mister! I'm not having it! Do you know how many times I called? Did you feed that phone to an alien or something or did you purposely screen my calls. Well? Let's have it. I want to hear this, mate, go on talk your way outta this one, you sneaky little –"

This looked to go on for some time, so the other twin waved, but remained on the other side of the kitchen. "I'm Doc," he said a little quietly. "Nice to meet you, Tom."

"The Doctor and Doc?" he repeated, brow arching.

"Yeah. Like it wasn't hard enough to tell 'em apart," said Jack with a snort. "Ginger boy here just rolled in outta the blue. We're still trying to figure out what to do with him. He's eating us out of house and home."

"Bite me, Captain Cheeseball" retorted the redhead glibly.

Jack's grin was wolfish.

"Don't."

"He's just embarrassed because there's a little bit of Donna in him that wants me."

"You have a stunted version of what two-way biological metacrisis means, monkey-boy."

"What does that even _mean_? 'Biological metacrisis'? I thought 'meta' meant –"

"Hey, _you_ wanna make up vocabulary for something that's never happened before in the whole of Space and Time, then go right ahead."

Tom felt he was missing something important, but figured he'd just have to ask Martha about it later. Doc yawned loudly and leaned against the counter, looking every word for knackered and Tom – inexplicably – was gripped by the sudden urge to demand if he'd been sleeping properly or eating vegetables. Which, given his background, wasn't terribly odd but the unwarranted affection with which he thought it was… strange. Strange as Martha Jones and her cup of coffee that just 'felt right'.

Immediately suspicious – and a necessary dabbler in the absurd – he cocked his head slightly and asked, "Doc, are you from a parallel world?"

"Brains and brawn," said Jack while Doc looked startled.

"Yeah," he said, looked slightly uncomfortable. "I am."

"Kay. I thought you might be. I'm getting hardcore parasympathetic déjà vu."

"Parasympathetic –? Oh, Tom I _like_ you," cheered Doc. "See, he's good. Parallel empathies: 'parasympathetic' indeed. Ha!"

"Better the 'biological metacrisis' anyway."

"Oi! I told you I was making it up on the spot!"

Tom drew them away from their tangent. "Doc, do we know each other in the other world?"

He nodded. "Yeah."

Jack eyed the red-head with a look that Tom could only describe as not entirely trusting. Obviously he hadn't mentioned this. Tom nodded.

"So the reason I feel like I've met you before… is because I have?"

"No," said Doc sadly. "You haven't. There's simply a functioning parallel timeline where a version of you has met me. That's a dominant Timeline. Sometimes, if those timelines cross in some way – for example a fixed point like me falls through the dimensions – then you get sympathy pangs from your parallel timeline. It's just temporal physics telling you there's something 'right' about someone or something. I'm a very strong variable in a probable timeline and you can feel it. Don't take it too seriously."

Tom decided he'd need some more time travel talks and was relieved he was a doctor and not a physicist.

"So… Jack and two Doctors?" he tangents.

Doc groaned. "Oh gawd…"

"It's not nearly as much fun as you'd think," said Jack with a surly sort of glower. "These two are incompressible as a solar flare. I can't even follow their jokes most of the time. I stop paying attention and suddenly they're telling temporal physics one-liners. And that's only when they speak English, little jerks." He smirked. "But despite all that…" He threw a thumbs-up and mouthed _'hot'._

Doc said something glibly in another language and Jack glared. From the other side of the room the Doctor shouted: "Doc! Stop teasing Jack! Jack, stop hitting on Doc!" Then Martha pinched his ear and he was thusly distracted again. The three of them winced in sympathy.

"If it helps," called Jack, "he was saving a planet at the time."

"He has a time machine!"

"This is the only time I've ever heard that used as a negative."

Doc suddenly burst a loud derisive: "HA!"

Martha decided she'd abused her Doctor enough and let him go. Then she closed in on Doc, who seemed rather less worried about Martha closing in on him than most men might have been. He just grinned at her like he was happy to see her, slightly angry or not.

"And you! You're no better. Look at you! You're under weight, pale, tired, look like you've had it on with a wood chipper. Blimey, the both of you. If you're not skipping out on weddings and important domestics, you're getting yourselves killed." She caught his arm and tugged him out of the kitchen. "C'mon you. Check up. Right now. Doctor's orders and I do mean _me_, thanks. Tom? You coming?"

Jack and the Doctor were left blinking in the wake, looking slightly gobsmacked. Tom just shrugged.

"My wife," he said with a smirk.

Then he followed her out, whistling.

---

-

---

Martha Milligan didn't know what to make of him. She hadn't known what to make of him five years ago and she wasn't any better off now that he was ginger, fit and slightly battered. As a member of UNIT and wife of a man who'd formerly been in _Doctors Without Borders_, their flat was well stocked with the tools of their trade and more than a couple handy alien medical technologies. Assuring the half-human that the other two were still in the kitchen, Martha and Tom dragged him a little reluctantly into the study and sat him in an armchair.

Tom went to fetch the medical kits, Martha was left with Doc.

"Hello," she said, half-smiling.

"Hullo," he said, also half smiling.

There was a time she'd might have made small talk, might have tried to dance around the subject, but she'd learned a long time ago and the hard way that that wasn't the way to do thing with the Doctor, or anyone really. So she cocked her head and asked quite plainly, "Do I know you, Doc? In the other world?"

He nodded.

She glanced briefly toward the door.

Doc shifted backwards in his seat when she crossed the floor between them sank down in front of him so she could look him properly in the eyes – so strange how brilliantly green they were. Bright instead of dark. She took his hands in hers, dry and cool and examined them with a doctor's medical indifference while at the very same time awed by the familiarity and the roughness that she'd never felt before in the original version. He seemed aware of this, of the scars with their obvious source in violence, taken and given both. His right index finger and left pinky had been broken and healed. He had the hard knuckles of a fighter. The injuries of recent use. It embarrassed him. She rubbed a thumb across the back of his hand, the dark lines left by the trajectory of shrapnel or glass shards and he exhaled the breath he'd been holding.

"I know both of you," he said. "In the other universe I mean. You're married there too."

Martha looked up. "Are we really?"

He nodded.

She smiled warmly. "Guess we were meant to be."

He swallowed and nodded. "Yeah. Definitely."

"Except we're dead," she added.

He froze. "What? No –"

"Your heart rate jumped," she said, running her thumb pointedly over the pulse in his wrist. "You're pretty human you know, mister. No fooling me." Her playful smiled dimmed a little. "Is that why you're here?

"I just…" he said, stopped, went on quietly, "I just wanted to see your faces."

"You haven't told Jack or the Doctor yet."

"No."

"You probably should. Keeping secrets…" She smiled ruefully. "It never works out."

"It's such a big secret though, Martha. It's massive and… and internal. I don't know if I can tell them."

"Can you tell me?" she asked gently.

He shook his head. "It's not for telling."

"In that case, you just know that you're not alone. You've got all of us. You've got me and Tom and the Doctor and Jack and we're all here."

She reached around him and pulled him into a hug that he readily returned, pulling her close and holding her like he had obviously wanted to since the very second she opened the door. He hid his face briefly in her neck, squeezed once, then sat back as Tom walked into the room. Martha kissed Doc on the forehead and stood up with a deep breathe. Tom nodded incrementally, not fully understanding, but knowing enough to get it was important. His flexibility of norms was one of the things she loved about him.

"Are we ready?"

"If you are," Tom replied.

"Yup," chirped Doc. All trace of that stricken soldier was gone, erased by that curious smile, examining the bag of tools in Tom's hand. "Is that a 66nd century DNA sequencer? Oh brilliant! We could have used one of those at Torchwood. Took ages for them to do every little thing. This one time, in Scotland…"

---

-

---

The truth – though neither Doctor had any idea and would continue to have no idea for quite some time – was Jack Harkness already knew why Doc wanted to see Tom and Martha. Or rather, he _thought_ he knew why. Had a pretty good idea and a couple other hazy not-so-good ideas why. This had happened two days ago when the three of them had gotten to work on the wiring beneath the console and Jack lost the molecular welding torch.

"You've lost the molecular welding torch?" demanded the Doctor.

"No, the TARDIS just ate it probably," Doc said from somewhere under the floor paneling.

Jack yanked up a grate to frown into the red-head's startled face. "She didn't really eat my welding torch. Where is it?"

He pointed down an adjacent hall. "Thataway. Look for a blue door labeled 'Stuff'. She always puts things there if she forgets where they used to go."

The Doctor banged his head on something again. "Your TARDIS _forgets_ things?!"

"Eh, little things," said Doc dismissively.

Jack left the two time travelers bickering over the dangers of slightly eccentric time machines and explored the hallways a bit. Like the Proper TARDIS, the halls were crammed with doors leading everywhere, many of them leading to the same room from different impossible angles. Having grown accustomed to this sort of thing Jack proceeded down the hall and, while he did look for a blue door, took the opportunity to try every single other door he found. Thus far, there was a bowling alley, a bar, a swimming pool, and several arcades. He found a room full of clocks, a room full of fish tanks, and one room with what looked like a live many armed beast frozen in a block of ice. (Jack saw its eyes, mad and silent, fix on him as he closed the door. Its aphasic scream lingered silent and insane in Jack's memory.) He found a study, a bed room, and another bedroom; this one looking recently lived in but not by Doc.

He explored this room.

There were books stacked on the comforter – spilled sideways on the pillows and half lost in the unmade sheets – bearing the marks of frequent use: peppered by the post-notes the blue high-lighter he'd found stuck to the main console yesterday. The same someone who'd written remainders not to forget to buy milk and new shoes. This ghost had unrolled a blank sheet of paper and filled it with only slightly impossible equations, long movie trailer scrolls of mathematical script that spelled out inchoate and fever-bright possibilities that seemed ominously familiar.

An old photo strip bookmarked a recent page. In one frame Martha Jones was grinning sidelong into the camera, one arm around a handsome pediatrician that even in the parallel world was probably named Tom. Then she was kissing him sloppily for the camera and Tom was – with apparent ease – restraining an exasperated looking Doc, his hair stuck up wildly, looking as though he'd been yanked into the booth without his consent. Third frame had them grinning conspiratorially. They were obviously friends. Looked like a 45th century photo booth. But all Jack saw was what he didn't see.

Rose wasn't there. Wasn't anywhere.

Jack picked up this photo and folded it with his thumb, his forefinger tracing the faces briefly – then noticed the bottom half of the strip and _froze_. The last photo, just under the picture where Tom and Martha were wrestling gleefully with the impatient ginger metacrisis, a fourth figure appeared in the edge of the picture. Pushed out of frame slightly by Doc's elbow, looking as though he were lecturing the three of them was a fair-haired man – slightly gaunt, pale, but as good-looking as Jack remembered. Unlike how Jack remembered him, he was smiling crookedly at the trio, the way a friend would.

Suddenly, Jack remembered, with rushing and painful clarity, the handwriting on their debriefing paperwork, scrunched and scribbled while his partner bitched about bureaucratic Time Agency bullshit and kicked his boots against his desk. Suddenly the room seemed dreadfully familiar. Too familiar.

Jack pocketed the photostrip and found his molecular welding torch fairly quickly after that.

(He didn't bring it up.)

---

-

---

"He's bloody incredible," said Tom a bit more loudly than necessary.

Martha sighed and dragged her husband onto the sofa beside her, forcing him to sit still. Ignoring this, he went right on talking, eager in his excitement, the way he got whenever he thought he was onto something medically, when a diagnosis was near or he thought he'd finally placed a finger on whatever nutritional blip was making a person ill… or when he'd just finished looking at a scientific discovery of mind blowing possibilities. Martha – who was used to this sort of thing, Tom and mind-blowing possibilities both – just rolled her eyes and let him go on.

"We used an instantaneous DNA sequencer to have a look at his genetic blueprint, see if there were any trouble spots, inheritable diseases, erratic codons and what have you. This thing gives us the laundry list of probable medical problems anyone or anything might have due to their own genes."

"Doesn't your sonic screwdriver have a setting like that?" Jack inquired.

"Shh," said the Doctor.

Martha sat forward. "Alright, here's the crazy thing. He's one-hundred-percent human according to the DNA sequencer."

"But it's way more than that," Tom broke in. "It's like…I don't know how to get at it. It's impossible."

"It's like he's one-hundred and ten percent human," said Martha simply.

Jack blinked. "Sorry. Run that by me again?"

"Doc is human, but you're telling me his genetic structure is some form of highly evolved homo superior version of the usual humdrum human DNA helix," said the Doctor.

"Yes," said Martha. "He's a perfect human. Everything about him is so highly developed his DNA only resembles a human DNA strand in basic structure. It's arguable that it's even _homo sapien_ in origin."

"And every genetic allele is dominant," said Tom. "It's unlike anything I've ever seen."

The Doctor ran a hand over his face, muttering. "Part Time Lord… our genetics are the most dominant in existence. Figures. Mind if I have a look at that?"

"You'd better take it," said Martha. "This kind of data's a bit sensitive to leave lying around this timeline, isn't it?"

The Doctor plucked the small device from her hand and popped the memory chip. The sonic screwdriver whined briefly, obliterating the backup memory on the little machine. He handed it back. "Yup."

"Umm," said Jack, deciding that he was going to ask the obvious question since all three of his doctors right now were wildly distracted. "Sorry. I must have been zoning out. But where did you say Doc was?"

Martha and Tom exchanged looks. "He just suddenly got tired and went to sleep," said Martha slowly. "Said it was part of a… healing cycle."

"But…" said Jack.

"He finished that cycle two days ago," finished the Doctor.

There was a split second of revelation. Then the Doctor jumped up and shot down the hall, Jack scrambling over the back of the sofa and running for the front door. Tom stared with some mild shock as his houseguests darted away like soldiers in the face of an air-raid siren. Martha was on her feet in an instant.

"He's not in the house!" the Doctor shouted, dashing back into the living room.

"That's because he's in the bloody TARDIS!" Jack hollered, sprinting out the front door. "Doc! Doc, stop!"

"What's going on?" Martha demanded loudly. "Doctor! Jack!"

"I think," said Tom as the bright red phone-box on the lawn hummed and whined, fading from their reality, "it's called pulling a runner."

**Author's Note:**

_Finally! Things may get interesting. God this story is moving slow. Well, to keep you busy, if there are others of you good-fic Doctor Who lovers out there, I highly recommend stories by __**Super Chocolate Bear**__ for Tennent-talk enthusiasts, __**Hazardous Materials**__ for awesome young Doctor, __**Metal Dog**__ for the BEST Eleventh Doctor story EVER, and __**Random-Battlecry**__ for the most touching Tennent-talky Rose/Doctor tales around. BTW: all credit for a ginger Doctor Duplicate belongs to __**Jessa L'Rynn's**__ story 'A Bardic Tale', which you need to read. Right now! Her stories are always much more cheerful than mine. _

_Read and review because I don't know what I'm doing! Until next time – laters!_


	4. Remembrance

**Remembrace**

_(What happens when what's forgotten isn't.)_

"That little brat pulled a runner on me!" the Doctor said indignantly.

"I'm sorry, since when are there two TARDISes?" Martha demanded. "I thought you just redecorated finally after five years. He grew a TARDIS?"

"In a pie-tin apparently," added Jack.

"What? Really?" said Martha, intrigued.

"Could we go a little faster?" the Doctor groused with an impatient little bounce. "Rogue time-traveler trumps funny speed-limits."

"I'm not getting a ticket, mister! UNIT doesn't pay me so well I can afford my insurance going up. Hush it!" Despite her words, Martha put on a little more gas, her blue sedan bouncing over neighborhood speed bumps and smacking the Doctor's head into the ceiling. "And sit down! Put on a seat belt and stop fretting like it'll do you any good. Why would Doc ditch you two?"

"Hopefully not to steal the proper TARDIS," muttered Jack darkly.

The Doctor glared. "No. He wouldn't, but he might land-lock it if he wants to get a real head start."

"There she is!" Martha veered into the driveway, parked and was out of the car in an instant, but not faster than Jack and the Doctor, who were already darting into the TARDIS sitting the lawn. She followed closely and managed to wedge her arm in the door before the Doctor shut it behind him. She shoved it open, knocking the startled Time Lord up the walkway and snapped, "Oh, no you don't. You're not taking off without me! He's my patient now and you can bite me. No! _You_ shut up and take me. You're still in the doghouse for not seeing me at my own wedding, you dunce. Drive!" She slammed the door behind her.

The Doctor, looking suitably cowed, joined Jack at the console.

"What have we got?"

"Full range of temporal movement," Jack said eyes on the screen readouts. "No bugs in the nav systems. No jumps or blips. I don't think he landlocked us. We're good."

"Doesn't matter if we can't find him," the Doctor said irritably.

"What are you talking about? He can just use the scanner to trace his – Oooh…"

The Doctor was holding up a complicated looking piece of circuitry with a post-it note attached.

It said: "Sorry."

"That the scanner?" Martha inquired, dead-pan, hands on hips.

"Well, a bit of it, yeah."

"An important bit?" asked Martha.

The Doctor sniffed. "Yup."

"Great," said Jack, tossing his hand up. "He could be anywhere, doing who knows what. It'll take forever to get that back in place. And that's if he hasn't sabotaged something else."

"Stoppit," Martha snapped coolly. "We don't know he's doing something bad. If he was, don't you think he would have done more? He could have land locked you or… or stolen the Doctor's TARDIS altogether, but he didn't. He just hid so that means he wants to be found again, but after he's done whatever he's doing. _Think_. Who else does he know from the parallel world that he might want to visit here? C'mon, Doctor. He's you, isn't he? Where would you go?"

"He's not me," the Doctor started to say, wearily, then stopped. He sat up straight, eyed wide. "He's not me," he repeated. "He's not me. He's doesn't – Oh bugger!" He threw himself at the console and initiated the take-off sequence. "Bugger, bugger, bugger!"

The ship rocked and rattled briefly, humming once. Then the Doctor slammed on the hand brake and ran out the door, jacket flapping at his heels and was gone before either Martha or Jack could demand what the hell he thought he was playing at. Not, it must be pointed out, that asking him would have done them much good anyway. The Doctor was notoriously bad at explaining anything when he was in a rush.

When they stepped outside the TARDIS, they found that the Doctor had parked it under a bunch of trees in a neighborhood park. It was busy with mothers and children, little kids in puffy zip-ups and Spiderman hoodies. The happy chattering chaos of play drowned out the noise of light traffic in the street behind them. The music of a picnic radio playing merrily among the families seated all around. They'd walked in on a block party of some kind and the Doctor had quite readily vanished into it, presumably after Doc, not that either of them could imagine why Doc would come _here_. Jack closed the doors behind him and pulled his sleeve up to the watch on his Vortex Manipulator.

"It's the same time," Jack said, sounding baffled. "We've just moved."

"Jack."

"Why would he come here we're in…" He looked around. "Where are we?"

"Jack," said Martha.

"What?"

She nodded toward the playground.

Jack turned around. "Oh…"

---

-

---

Doc was sitting on a bench by the swings, arms folded across his stomach, staring blankly ahead without any sort of appreciable expression on his face. He didn't look up or react when the Doctor came to stand by the bench or even when the full Time Lord took a seat next to him. He just sat there very quietly watching the kids run around with unreadable eyes, impervious to the laughter and motion of people around him. Reticent as chunk of old marble. Somewhat familiar with the expression on his face – having warn it many times over the years himself – the Doctor didn't try to say anything because in his experience it rather irked him when people tried to talk to him during a mood like this. Instead he just sat beside his sort of brother and waited while people played classic rock on an old static radio.

"How'd you find me?" Doc asked finally.

The Time Lord shrugged. "I guessed." A pause. "And I make a habit of always knowing where she is."

"I thought I had at least an hour before you fixed the scanner."

"Yeah, well, I'm clever me."

Doc snorted.

"Did you know?" the Doctor asked gently.

Doc nodded.

"Did you talk to her?"

"Of course not," he snapped. "I'm not completely thick, thanks."

The Doctor didn't say anything to refute that. He just stared at his duplicate with eyes that held the same history as Doc's…almost anyway. The twins sat there watching a game of Red Rover get intense and thought at the exact same moment, though unaware that the other was thinking the same, that it reminded them of a game Gallifreyan children used to play on red grass eons and ages ago. Doc closed his eyes.

"It hurt, Doctor. When she died." He swallowed. "It nearly killed me."

"I'm sorry."

"Rose took care of me."

"I knew she would."

"Yeah. Good old Rose."

The Doctor didn't say anything.

"Why don't you just ask me already?"

"Because I saw your hand, Doc. The rest isn't any of business."

"Damn," muttered Doc, covering his left hand in the palm of his right, hiding the pale band worn around the base of his left ring finger. He smiled downward. "This body scars too easily. Nothing heals right. Every mistake is forever." There was a universe of unsaid things in those words, but the Doctor made no effort to touch on them.

"Doc, why did you run here? You could have just asked me."

He shook his head. "No. Not this. I needed to see her myself. By myself, Doctor. Just to know… she's really gone."

When he spoke, he wasn't looking at the Doctor, but out across the swings. There was a woman in a purple sweater and sneakers. She cheered and clapped every time the little girl in the swing cried, "Lookit me! Lookit me! I'm flying!" The lovely red-haired woman assured the girl that she was indeed flying and that she was brilliant as the day was long. Several other children dashed at her knee and flung themselves around her legs, shrieking good-naturedly for attention. They called her 'teacher' and 'Ms. Noble' and she despaired of their grass-stains and delighted in pulling a hanky from her pocket to rub their faces with.

Once, Donna Noble glanced up at them. She went back to playing with the kids.

Doc had to look away into the sky and mutter something bitter in Gallifreyan and the Doctor carefully looked away. There was a comforting echo in his head every time Doc spoke their dead language as though it were still virulent and living. After a while, the Doctor reached out… thought better of it and didn't touch him.

"I'm sorry, Doc. I couldn't think of anything else. I thought if you were separated the psychic bask-lash might be reduced. You were more Time Lord and I was hoping… I _needed_ to save at least you."

"You did, Doctor."

"I'm sorry."

He didn't answer. He shook his head and laughed, "She's a bloody kindergarten teacher."

"Super temp," the Doctor said, shrugging.

"I can't stay here. Let's go. I can't… looking at her is driving me mad."

"Just tell me where."

Doc laughed, getting to his feet and rubbing his hands over his face. "Anywhere," he said. "Just get me away from –"

A hand touched his shoulder.

Doc spun around like a tapped burglar. The Doctor froze on the bench. Three hearts stopped simultaneously and kick-started double-time. Standing right behind him, a little girl holding her left hand, her identical green eyes narrowed curiously, was Donna Noble.

"I'm sorry," she said, flicking her hair from her face and staring. "But I could swear I know you."

---

-

---

"That's bad," Jack said, abandoning the buffet table.

Martha made a small noise of distress, like a strangled curse word. She, like Jack had, spotted Doc across the playground. He was backing away from what seemed like an increasingly insistent Donna Noble, who was following the retreating half Time Lord across the grass. He kept waving his hands and trying to hide his face from her, spinning around and ducking his head in what was, frankly, a pretty ridiculous fashion. She, countering his evasive action, juked and side-stepped around to block his escape routes and kept herself firmly positioned directly in his face. She appeared to be talking him down. He looked terrified. The Doctor – completely ignored it seemed – stood looking on, mouth hung open, with a look of identical horror on his face.

"She can't remember him," Martha cried, gripping Jack's arm.

"She doesn't remember the Doctor, but Doc…" the ex-Time Agent shook his head. "They were part of each other. There's no telling what she might remember."

"Oh no."

"Damn, damn, dammit."

Across the lawn Doc was having a similar reaction.

"Oh bugger, bugger, bugger…" he muttered frantically, trying to get away from the irate kindergarten teacher.

"Stop spinning about, I know I've seen you somewhere," ordered Donna, following the pacing part-Time Lord closely. "Stop being silly. We're grown bloomin' adults, here. What's your name?"

"I… I don't… This isn't a good idea," he said trying to move away, but Donna had an accomplice in the form of several students. They'd formed a sort of ring around Doc's knees and were preventing him leaving by clinging gamely to his jeans and giggling. This seemed to have an utterly paralyzing effect on Doc, who just stood there, anchored by small children to the summer lawn. "This really isn't a good idea," he tried again. The children giggled.

"That's right, kids. Just like I taught you. Now, you, stop being ridiculous. Where've I seen you before?"

"Oh God…"

"In church? I don't think so. I'd remember you from church."

"Umm, please let go of my pants. I need to go… away," said Doc desperately to the small boy on his right knee.

The boy thought it over. "Nope."

"Bugger."

Donna stood, arms akimbo, looking as indefatigable as anything Doc could remember. "Well, let's have it then. I'm Donna Noble and you are…"

"Nobody. I'm no one. Really. Really-really. Please go away."

"Why've got this feeling I know you?"

"I dunno. You're nuts?"

"Yeah. No. I'm not being blown off that easy, kiddo. Kids, get his ankles."

"Please, Donna. I can't…" Doc begged, trying to pry a girl off his back pocket.

"They aren't comin' off unless I say they are, mate. Better start talking."

"Err," said the Doctor, approaching carefully. Donna eyed him threateningly, but without identification. "Hullo. I'm sorry, is there a reason you've got a small batch of children hanging on him?"

"Because he's being silly, completely without reason," Donna said matter of factly. "He's is refusing to admit he knows me, despite how obvious it is that he does. I remember."

The Doctor paled. "You do?"

"C'mon. Pub downtown? Parent teacher conference?" Donna cajoled, ignoring the question. "You Kenny's older brother?"

Doc shook his head. "You don't know me. I'm sorry."

"Yes I do," Donna cried, a little angrily now. She caught his hand. "I know your face…" Uncertainty flashed through her eyes. "Don't I?"

The Doctor moved to stand between them. "Stop. That's enough," he ordered gently. He took their linked hands and untangled them, pulling them apart. He handed her arm back to her, dark eyes rising to meet hers and hold her gaze, completely unrecognized. "Leave him alone."

The woman started at the two of them, her gaze a swimming pool of murky desperation, trying to see something in them. Then the desperation faded and she stepped back, shaking her head as if to clear it. Sense seemed to reassert itself and she looked embarrassed. She quickly waved the kids away from Doc – one of whom had looped her hands in the denim at his left knee and reluctantly let go to join her teacher. Doc stared after her, looking the way you do when small accidents kill people. The kindergarten teacher pressed a hand to her face and tried ineffectively to smile.

"I'm so sorry, I don't… I don't know what I was thinking. I'm sorry. It was my mistake."

"S'okay," said Doc shakily.

"I'm sorry." She covered her mouth and moved away, a line of moisture falling down her cheek. "C'mon children. There's brownies on the dessert table. Let's go get some. Quickly. Go, go, go."

She walked away, her students bouncing around her and asking who the twins were, was the other ginger her brother, and if there would be milk. She assured them there would be milk and kept walking. Jack and Martha, who'd been watching from nearby, made their way over.

"What the hell just happened?" Jack demanded.

Doc ran his hands through his hair at he exact same instant the Doctor moved to do the same (the Time Lord, spotting this, however, scratched his ear instead). "She recognized me."

"She didn't recognize you physically." The Doctor's expression was unreadable. "She wouldn't. That's gone. I made sure. If she was remembering faces she would have recognized us both. She only remembered you, Doc. She's very us, down to the genetic level and she was physiologically bound to you. So some part of her, the Time Lord part that can't ever wake up now, recognized you as one of her own. You two are the only half human Time Lords in existence after all. Makes sense. Any residual psionic connection should be repressed beyond conscious thought, but it's not unreasonable that she'd get a kind of really intense …déjà vu, seeing you."

"Stop it," Doc snapped. "Shut up or I swear I'll clock you."

"Let's get out of here," Jack said conspiratorially. "Before she has any more déjà vu and comes back over to investigate. Okay?"

Doc was breathing funny. "I don't feel so hot…" he gasped.

"Doc?"

The half Time Lord doubled over. "Really, _really_ don't feel good."

"Look, I know it's upsetting, but you need to calm down," the Doctor began. Then stopped. The world, for laughs and giggles, had suddenly turned on its side. "Oh dear…"

"Doctor!" Martha shouted, grabbing his arm. "Doctor, look! The sky!"

The Doctor spun.

Doc clutched his chest. "_No_. Oh no…"

The Doctor could feel the fabric of reality straining and stretching. It twisted in his brain. "Doc! What's happening?"

"I didn't mean to," he gasped. Doc looked up, eyes radioactive green and horrified. "I didn't mean it, Doctor. Oh God… run. RUN!"

Then the stratosphere fractured. A crackling gap – like a jagged line of lightening and distortion – tore open in the air over the buffet table, over the swing sets, the park, the whole neighborhood. There was a powerful reek of ozone and a flush of humidity. Jack _screamed_ and before the Doctor's eyes could make the incremental adjustment from the sky to the ex-Time Agent, reality _convulsed_. Everything blurred. There was chaos in his skull and he felt his mind twist. He felt Martha hit the ground beside him and tried not to join her. Everything seemed to press, press, press in as though something was pushing in on them from all sides, trying to take their space and posses their position and crush them into dust…

And then there was a massive 'pop' in his brain, the cosmological snap of a pop can lid – depressurizing the dimensions – and the world snapped back into place. The Doctor hit the grass, gasping and retching slightly, Martha on top of him. The Timelines whirled in his brain, a shaken cocktail of possibilities before realigning themselves and leaving the Doctor insensible and reeling. _That,_ he decided painfully, _can't be good._ And then the world went dark.

---

-

---

"_Chips!" says Doc cheerfully, bounding out of the TARDIS with two baskets of them. He kicks the door shut behind him and grins stupidly. "Oh stop looking at me like that, Rose Tyler. That's little furrow in your brow's been telling me to jot out and get you some all evening."_

"_Or," says Rose, all knowing and clever, "you just really want any and every excuse to take the TARDIS out for spin."_

_The skinny half Time Lord sets her basket of chips on top of her paperwork then drops himself into the armchair across from her. Rose quickly snatches her case work folders from harms way just as the heel of Doc's trainers kick themselves up on that particular corner of her desk. Her papers are almost entirely stamped with the emblem T of Torchwood, though, both of them have long since gotten used to it. Doc proceeds to eat his own chips without the slightest hint that he's heard her say anything about TARDIS joy-riding. She sticks her tongue out at him and sets her work aside to tuck into her still hot meal. There is a companionable silence._

"_Mmm," she croons around a mouthful, eyes rolling. "Did you go to Benji's for these?"_

"_Rose Tyler, I have standards," he retorts with extreme dignity. "Of course I went to Benji's." _

"_I was craving. Didn't even know I was craving." She smacks his Chucks fondly. "Aww, thank you."_

"_Well, when you looked so boring and miserable buried in your paperwork…" He trails away with a bob of his left eyebrow. _

"_Don't you give me that," she says with a terse sort of no-nonsense look that only fools co-workers, never Doc. (Rose Tyler loves nonsense as much now as she's ever loved it. She just has duties now.) She reaches for another sheaf of papers. "Someone's gotta keep things in order around here and by the way, smartie-pants, I wouldn't have half this workload if you didn't go swannin' off in the middle of every single mission. The team's at wit's end keepin' up with you and I can't be there to watch your back every minute of every day. Yeah?" She snorts ungracefully and munches a couple chips. "And I'd appreciate if you brushed up on your Nubrainese. I thought that dignitary was gonna kill you." _

"_You can't blame me," Doc protests indignantly, "just because I got a little hazy on what the proper greeting protocol was for one little royal function. Honestly, if they didn't want people to get confused they'd stop making up such complex rules and regulations. Exhibit A: Have you _read_ a recent addition of 'Intergalactic Miss Manners'? There's far too many spoons involved in eating now a days. Who needs that many eating utensils? Me? You? I don't think so. Lookie here."_

_He holds up the fries he's eating as evidence. _

"_See? Hands free. Kinda… one hand free at least. No fuss. And I've side-tracked. Frankly, I think they were over-reacting. I mean who doesn't mix up those adverbs from time to time, as they are strikingly – _strikingly_ similar, Rose Tyler. Don't laugh. Not even the TARDIS can translate that language and I can very well almost speak it. It's not like I called the queen fat on purpose and – honestly – she was a bit portly if you're being honest and you're staring at me. What have I done now?" _

_Rose just grins. "Nothing, Doc. You just…" She shrugs. _

"_Sound like him. I know."_

"_It's not a bad thing."_

"_I know." _

"_You're ginger," she points out helpfully. _

_He perks up. "I know!" He munches on his meal with joy. "So when you're done there, I was thinking Betelgeuse Four. I'm dying to see if the parallel version is half as wizard as the primary version. Also, pack a bikini. Phosphorescent algae burst surfing, Rose Tyler. Just the thing for stressed out heads of secret government divisions. As doctor to patient I have to insist." _

"_You just want me in a bikini," she says. _

_He grins crookedly and wicked up at her. "I never once claimed, dear girl, that I was altruistic in my motives."_

"_Shame. I think I've finished. You start up the time machine."_

_She leans over the table and kisses him, licking salt and a smile from his lips and she thinks – wow, how about that? – she's really happy._

_She's just so happy…_

_And then the world obliterates itself. It's a howling color-twirl screaming abyss. She's spinning out, ripped up gone and sprawled out like a train wreck across the railroad crossing of her thoughts and Doc is standing over her with blood on his hands. Chips and surfing so so long alone. Staring at him with a heartful of awe, she wonders how it's come to this. He looks like she feels. His eyes are animal bright refractive green in the oil-splatter viscera splashed across his face and he's saying something to her. The gun he's holding to her forehead never trembles. The dead fill the empty spaces of her peripheral and she knows that he's the reason. _

"_I love you," he tells her. _

_And pulls. _

_The. _

_Trigger. _

---

-

---

When the Doctor wrenched himself free – choking, clammy, eyes burning with gunpowder firing residue – his twin, the red TARDIS, Jack and a good chunk of the crowd around the dessert table was missing. Martha was shouting at him, her voice an insistent watery noise, as if she were yelling through a pool. As if clearing water from his ear, he shook his head slightly and her words began to filter through at last to his rattled brain.

"- are gone, Doctor!" she was shouting. "The children are gone!"

The screaming started up momentarily.

_**Author's Note:**_

_Times are tough in the writing biz. New chapters may be a bit slow. Nevertheless, leave your feedback and I will cherish it and put it away for a rainy day. _


	5. Reconnaissance

Reconnaissance

_(What you do when things are all gone to hell.)_

When Jack opened his eyes, the Doctor was staring down at him and everything hurt.

"Did I just die?" Jack asked stiffly.

"No, but close," said the Doctor sardonically. "Temporal backlash. Messes with the time-sensitive. You alright?"

Jack groaned. "Oh no, wait. Wait. Tell me you're the Doctor. Oh please…"

"Sorry," said Doc, standing to his feet and hauling former Time Agent off the ground. He looked pale and mildly shaken and there was a bright red smudge of alkali dust across his right cheekbone, but it was undeniably the Other Doctor. "You'll just have to settle for sloppy seconds, because we've got a bit of a situation."

Still sickeningly fatigued, Jack reeled slightly, doubling over. It appeared that they'd landed in a narrow side alley of some kind. There were crates and rubbish bins stacked under doors and windows. The air was dry and a little dusty. Temporal let lag was hell on the slightly time aware. He'd be loopy for at least ten minutes so he excused himself of his snappishness. "Yeah?" he demanded sardonically. "Besides being wrenched through Time and Space and thrown through a nexus to God knows where? What situation is that?"

Doc looked at Jack with irritation. "The one where we're not alone."

The immortal looked up and resisted the urge to either throw up or start swearing, but did neither because A: he didn't find puking very dignified and B: you can't swear in front of six or seven frightened kindergarteners and a very violent looking Donna Noble.

Jack had the self preservation to be very, very afraid.

---

-

---

The smell of cut grass was heavy and warm, so thick he could taste it. Which meant, he supposed, that he was still on the ground. Not that that was very comforting considering that the ground was rocking and rolling like a fitful rowboat beneath him. Voices were meshing somewhere all around him, almost blood-curdling screams shared by mothers who'd lost their children between the cracks of reality, the lions roars of fathers hunting their daughter or son, general horrified babble. The Doctor felt that he'd heard all this before and too many times.

Doctor!" Martha cried. "Doctor, what the hell is going on? Everyone just vanished."

"No, Jack, Doc, Donna and her class have vanished."

"How? Why?"

"Working on it," the Doctor gritted out, climbing to his feet. The world was reeling on its axis around him, threatening to peel him off the skin of this tiny planet and throw him out the stratosphere into nowhere. He grimaced. "TARDIS. Now, Martha Jones. No dawdling!" He sprinted for the blue phone box, still thankfully parked on the sidewalk despite the small temporal rift that kidnapped its daughter vessel.

"Why didn't it get your TARDIS?" Martha demanded, closing the doors behind her and dashing to the centre console.

"Because she's old and clever. It takes more than one little blip in the fabric of time and space to phase this old girl. Bah!" he smacked the display screen. "But she's old and thick too!" He muttered what she supposed were filthy things in another language (TARDIS never seemed to translate that sort of thing when he did it). "What just happened was a great big pocket between the dimensions, like a sub-dimension – tinny little niche of random semi-reality wedged between our realities – just suddenly blew out. It's a one in a _billion_ never happens in a planet's life time rare phenomena (figures it would happen at Donna's block party) and it's rattled the TARDIS a bit. Wiped her tracking systems completely, fried some synaptic cluster cells…"

"Where are Jack and Doc?" Martha demanded.

"Working on it," he repeated with some stress. The sonic screwdriver hummed along a base panel. He pried it loose. "They've been flung across the galaxy. There's no telling where they are. When that sub-dimension imploded it blew it hole in reality, like a… err, like a submarine bursting underwater. It shoves out, a big concussive blast that's followed immediately by…"

"A backlash?" Martha hazarded. "Like all the water that got shoved out gets sucked back in. You saying that the other TARDIS, Jack and everyone got sucked in?" A nod from the Doctor. "But that's thick! Why would it just take them? Why not the whole street?"

"Exactly. An explosion like that shouldn't have been so concentrated. And it gets worse," the Doctor said, sonic screwdriver buzzing angrily. "If I'm clever, and I am, then I know walls don't fall down. If they fall down it's because something inside them has punched its way out." There was a 'bang!' and a bloom of white hot sparks. A sharp humming counterpoint joined the ambient noise of the TARDIS engines. Those forever eyes turned on Martha again, dark and angry. "It means Doc didn't tell us something important."

---

-

---

Luckily, instead of yelling and descending upon them in a red-haired fire-breathing, fist-swinging cloud of rage, Donna was engaged presently in the task of keeping six children calm. Smiling serenely she assured them all that they'd be back home very soon. They'd be back as soon as the nice men got their tails in gear and shifted themselves the bloomin' heck over here and explained what was going on. And they would do that _right now_. Then, of course, there would be lots of going home.

"That is unless Flyboy and Skinny want to get hit, of course," growled Donna in a way that made Jack think there was still a bit of Oncoming Storm hidden somewhere in there.

He cringed appropriately.

Doc, apparently not fearing the imminent danger, moved very carefully forward and crouched down near the huddled group. He folded his arms on his knees and appeared, to Jack's untrained eyes, all of twelve. He looked at everyone and smiled a little.

"Hullo. My name's Doc," he said gently.

Donna took a deep breathe, then nudged the kids. "Well, go on. Manners."

A little girl in green sandals stepped forward. "I'm Marsha." She pointed a frightened looking Chinese boy behind her. "And that's Chen. He's my best friend."

"I'm Billie," said a blonde girl in a pink cap.

"My name's Eli." A boy with freckles and a Batman shirt.

"I'm Jill and that's Mary," said one of two little brunettes. "We're sisters."

"Excellent. Marsha, Chen, Billi, Eli, Jill and Mary. And that's my friend Jack over there. Say 'hi', Jack."

Jack waved. "Hi. Captain Jack Harkness."

Donna smiled very tightly. "Okay kids," she said, patting the ground beside her. "The grown-ups are gonna have a chat so you all sit down there and hold hands. No moving, okay? Okay." She got up, grabbed Doc and Jack by lapels of their jackets and hauled them sideways. With surprising ease, she dragged them down the alley away from the kids and hissed furiously at Doc, "What the flippin' hell is goin' on? Where are we? I knew you were trouble, the moment I saw you. Don't know how, I just knew. God, I knew I should have stayed in today. What's going on?"

Jack looked at Doc. Doc grimaced. "Umm… an air bubble in Space and Time popped and blew us all across the galaxy?"

Donna stared. Then she smacked Doc upside the head with a powerful 'thwack!' that made Jack jump and the children giggle. Doc clutched his head, mouth agape, looking well and thoroughly floored. He stared at his hand in awe then, as if protesting:

"_Ow_!"

"Don't you bloomin' _lie_!" Donna ranted. "Right to my _face_! I'm not in the mood. God! I _knew_ you were trouble!"

"I'm not trouble! I didn't have anything to do with this."

"Bollocks, Skinny-Boy."

"Oi! I am not skinny!"

"You're a beanpole! A big, skinny ginger beanpole who kidnaps kids and grade-school teachers! You show up and all _this_ happens. I knew there was something about you and I was stupid enough to think it was something good. Well, I'm not havin' it! You take us back! _Right! Now_!" She was hollering at this point.

"_I! Can't_!" Doc roared back, face contorting. "God, would you listen for two seconds and stop _shouting_?"

"You're the one shouting!" she shouted back.

"Only because you're shouting!" shouted Doc.

"I'm not SHOUTING!" Donna screamed.

"YES YOU ARE!" Doc bellowed.

Before the retort – which Donna was winding herself up for – could deafen them all, Jack grabbed Donna and laid a big wet one on her. Her arms pin-wheeled, Doc's mouth dropped open, and the children gasped and giggled and made grossed out faces of that were perfectly shared by the red-headed half Time Lord beside them. The children giggled while their teacher was kissed mercilessly by the 51st century's finest. Frankly, she didn't seem to mind much if the enthusiastic smacking sounds were any indication.

"Yeah, alright. You finished yet?" Doc demanded at length.

Jack broke off with a very dazed looking Donna.

"Yeah, I think we're good," he said, pleased to have stopped the Doctor-Donna screaming match short.

"Mmmhmm," Donna said, brushing her hair from her face. She seemed to have forgotten she was upset about anything. "Yeah. We're… good. Yes. What were you saying?"

Doc eyed them like they were vitreous growth he'd discovered under his sink.

"Right then. Donna, Jack, everyone, pay attention." He held up his hands, palm to palm. "Realities exist in parallel to each other, stacked next to each other, back to back and side by side, divided from each other by non-reality. The Void. Usually it's pretty airtight and universes goes on as usual and no one's the wiser, but _sometimes – _little bitty sometimes_ –_ when a parallel world is generated, it creates…eddies in the Void. Spaces form between the walls of the worlds that aren't reality or Void, but a kind of anti-space. Pocket dimensions. Tiny empty air bubble worlds stuck in between. Follow me?"

Donna stared. Stared really, really hard. Then: "_Y'wot_?"

Doc threw up his hands. Jack took over. "Hi, Donna. I think what he's _trying_ to say is that there was a hole that got blown in the reality over the park. Like a wormhole." (Doc protested in scorn that it was not a 'wormhole'. Jack ignored him.) "It sucked us up and spat us out on another planet in another time. Like in the movies." He shrugged. "Basically."

Donna continued to stare.

"Oh balls," said Doc in defeat and peered into the street. "Hold on, I'll just prove it, shall I?"

He walked out of the alley they were huddle in and stepped into a highly populated main thoroughfare. He surveyed the street briefly, then tapped the nearest sentient on the shoulder. The shoulder belonged, as it turned out, to a massive many-armed insectoid. Enormous and many faceted eyes turned on him. A pair of mandibles clicked and buzzed curiously. Donna made a low choking sound.

"Hi. Sorry," said the half Time Lord unflappably. "I'm Doc. Bit of a tourist. You couldn't direct me to the nearest information kiosk could you?"

The monstrous creature shuffled horribly toward him. The children gasped. Donna squeaked.

"Why certainly, my good fellow!" sang the alien, voice small and faintly musical. The bulbous head swung toward the main road, nodding up the avenue. Her antenna waggled in a friendly manner, brushing Doc's hair as she spoke. "Just there on the corner. Under the blue arrows. The kiosks are open to anyone and usage is completely free. They feature a billion languages, though I must say your Venusian is impeccable, young…" She searched him cautiously. "…man?"

"Thank you, I try," said Doc modestly. The children were slowly uncurling from Donna's hip and venturing curiously forward. "And Venus. Yes. Good. I like Venus year… oh…" He waved around speculatively. "Seventy-three slash boat slash nine point six?" he hazarded.

"Oh dear," giggled the alien. "No, dearie. You must have your numeral participles mixed up. It's the year forty slash kitten slash two point seven."

"Right," said Doc, sniffing.

"Hi!" said Billie, appearing at Doc's hip. She grabbed his hand immediately for protection, but smiled bravely. "I'm Billie. I'm six."

"Oh! And what excellent Venusian, as well. My, my. These are a bright bunch you have," gushed the Venusian female.

Billie looked puzzled.

"Good," said Doc cheerfully. "Translation means the TARDIS is still working at least and, probably, very close by. Yay." Doc ruffled Billie's blond hair a bit. "Phone box! And yes. They're all pretty clever. Touring from a school in a local system. Very bright lot. Thanks, by the way, you've been a great help."

That strange head bowed low then turned away. She glided through the busy street and was gone.

"I liked her," said Billie.

"So did I," said Jack, who now had Mary on his shoulders and Jill attached to one edge of his great coat, Eli to the other. Doc glared. "What? She had a great figure."

"Oh. My. God," said Donna, dithering slightly. "We _are_ on another planet."

"Ya think?" said Doc, grinning as goofily as any of her students. "Venus," he announced. "Year six-billion-three thousand-nine-hundred and sixty three. Earth That Was couldn't handle the population density any more so human race colonized their solar system. In the spirit of kindness, the Venusians – nice species. Polite. Hung up on bananas. You lot get to meet them pretty soon I think – they opened their borders and the human immigration wave of the Neo-Explorative Era began. What you're looking at, Donna Noble kindergarten teacher from Chiswick, is an intergalactic downtown hub three eons in the making." Doc waggled his eyebrows. "Pretty neat huh?"

She smacked him on the arm.

"_Oi_!" he protested.

"Stop actin' so pleased with yourself," snapped Donna, who seemed to be taking this whole planetary relocation thing ridiculously well. "And stop wasting time. We've got children separated from their parents. Can you imagine how terrified they must be? So stop playin' cracked-out tour guide for two seconds so we can find that ship of yours and get these kids home. Got it, Genius?"

Doc winced. "Yes, ma'am."

"Okay." Jack bounced Mary eagerly on his shoulder. "Are we all ready now? Awesome field trip to Venus?"

The children cheered. This was one delight universal to all of Space and Time – that children are seldom worried by such trivial things as the rules of Time and Space so long as you present it to them in so interesting a fashion as a field trip. Doc smiled. Donna caught him at it and gave him a look like he was starkers.

"Cool," said Jack. "Now remember number one rule: No kissing anyone."

Doc and Donna glared simultaneously.

"Eww," said Chen.

"That's right. Eww," agreed Jack. "You'll change your tune when you're older so save it for then. Rule number two: No wandering off. Everyone holds hands and doesn't let go of their adult supervisor. Okay?"

Billie swung happily off Doc's arm. "I'm with Mr. Doc!"

Eli abandoned the corner of Jack's jacket and grabbed the part Time Lord's free arm. "Me too!" he cried.

"Err, wait," Doc said, alarmed eyes darting between the pair of kindergarteners.

"Two each," said Donna imperiously. "Marsha and Chen. You're over here with me. Hold my hands. Okay. Now, everyone mind your manners. Look but don't stare. No kicking or biting. And ask Mr. Doc or Mr. Jack before doing _anything_. Clear?"

"Yes, Miss Donna!" chorused the children.

Donna straightened up. "Right then." She nodded. "Lead on, Spaceman."

Doc – a human child on each arm, Jack the immortal and Donna Noble in tow – took a deep breathe and led the batch of wayward humans into the chaotic day time traffic of an alien city.

---

-

---

"What do you mean, Doctor?" Martha demanded, chasing the hustling Time Lord on his helter-skelter sprint about the TARDIS console. "What do you mean 'something important'? What's wrong?"

"Everything!" the Doctor shouted, sliding buttons up and down. "Everything is wrong. Absolutely everything!"

"What's that _mean_, Doctor?"

"It's very bad!"

"What do you MEAN, 'very bad'?"

"Think bad," he shouted, kicking a panel loose from under the console. "It's like that, but very."

"Doctor! What do you need?!" Martha hollered, her patience reaching the end of its limits

He stopped running and grabbed her. He moved so quickly, she didn't even feel his hands close on her shoulders before his face was suddenly, dangerously close to hers. She froze. His eyes held eternity. "I need to know what Doc hasn't told me," he said in a quiet terrible voice that made Martha shiver from her spine to her fingertips. Then, fast as a slide-show shift the rage was gone and he ducked under the console again, reconnecting split wires, sonic screwdriver buzzing furiously. He whacked something on the underside of the console and the TARDIS groaned.

"What… Doc said something. Before he vanished he told you to run," Martha said resolutely. "And you say something punched through the walls between dimensions." She drew the reasonable conclusion. "You think something's followed Doc and he knows what it is."

"Hole in one," came his muffled retort.

"What are you doing?" she demanded.

"Manual reboot," the Doctor shouted. "Well, I say reboot but it's way, way, way, way more complex and ridiculously complicated than that. Also, possibly, maybe, a little bit dangerous but I don't have time to coddle. Ow!" There a loud _zap_! from somewhere beneath the central column. The Doctor, face slightly blackened, emerged. "It's the Time Lordy equivalent of pressing control-alt-delete. Kinda. Hold onto something Martha. It's possible we're about to explode."

Before she could protest that last bit, he yanked a lever and the whole TARDIS rattled and rocked; a grinding penny on a cello string noise that struck like a whiplash through her brain and Martha reeled. She squeezed her eyes shut until, finally, the noise and motion ceased. When she opened her eyes, the Doctor was checking things on the display screen and looking exceedingly displeased.

"Still nothing. Nada. Zip. Whatever this was, it attacked her systems with extreme deliberation, Martha Milligan. Extreme deliberation and prejudice. Someone wanted us grounded but only temporarily. Which, to me, smacks of more big fat Timey Lordy traps –" He stopped midsentence and stared at Martha with hurt in his expression. "Why are so many people intent on trapping me? I'd rather they didn't and I thought I was reasonably well-liked in most places. Well, I say most, I mean about half – Well, not half about… Well, a couple. Point is: That's just rude. I'm offended. If someone's grounded us temporarily that means they want me popping in to save the day, but only after they've had time to set something up."

"So what do we do?" Martha demanded, hating and thrilling at this familiar rush of anxiety.

The Doctor didn't look up from his fiddling. "Hope Doc is clever as I am, because whatever when he is, he's not alone."

---

-

---

To keep everyone occupied, Doc launched into a long diatribe on the history of Venus as might be told my Dr. Seuss. Soon most of the kids were clustered around him like ducklings as he wandered down the street, pointing out things of interest and explaining them at length. At some point he produced a back of Jelly Babies from his pocket and shared them around while explaining the overall 'wizardness' of a psionic sphere juggler from the moon of Praxon Callus. The children asked questions and he happily supplied answers. It wasn't long until all the children were completely unworried by the alien world around them.

"He's very good at this," Donna murmured to Jack. "The kids are calmer than I am."

Jack was staring. "He's freaking me out."

Donna arched an eyebrow, but Jack was too busy watching Doc too take much note. All and all, Donna thought she was doing pretty well for a kindergarten sub from Chiswick. In all fairness, she should have been screaming and crying and going all sorts of mad or something – culture shock, heebie-jeebies, etc. But that seemed rather tiresome and altogether unhelpful so Donna decided to skip it and get right to the Acceptance stage of the game and help the two space men figure out how to get home through what was, apparently, billions of miles of distance and billions of years in time.

This was surprisingly good fun, Donna was discovering.

"So you and him," said Donna, deciding that if she was going to wander the surfaces of strange planets in strange times, then might as well get to know her strange tour guides. (It had no relevance at all that this one was smokin' hot.) She cleared her throat. "You're mates or just accidental partners in this whole cock-up."

"That's not very nice talk for a primary school teacher," Jack pointed out, still staring at Doc like an unexpected puzzle. Then he smiled at her. "But naughty school teacher _is_ kinda sexy, though."

Donna gave him a look. "You didn't answer my question, Captain." She paused. "And Captain of what by the way? You never said. Wait… no. Answer the first question first. Then the other one. Go."

Now he stared at _her_ like an unexpected puzzle. "Umm… Well, as much fun as it would be to be any sort of mate with Doc, we're mostly acquaintances. I've known him physically about a week and you really don't want me to explain what I mean when I say _physically_… and no. It's not that. He'd punch me in the face if I tried… or even if I don't actually, Point is, we don't get on. And I used to be a Captain in a certain agency. I got kicked out though. Now, I just use it because it sounds more authoritative." He shrugged.

"So you don't know him so well?" Donna clarified.

Jack scratched his ear. "Well, I know things _about_ him. A lot of things, but yeah I don't know him know him. We're not pals."

Donna watched the subject of their conversation carefully. He was engaged just presently in wrangling Billie off Eli and scolding them for fighting. He did so, she thought, with a certain amount of confidence that one only developed through natural affinity for children or long time prolonged exposure to children. Donna sensed that, for him, it was probably the latter though she couldn't, again, put a finger on why she thought that.

"Do you trust him though?"

"Err…"

"Never mind," Donna sighed. "I'll just presume to let neither of you out of my sight and go from there."

"Okay," said Doc, bounding up to an info kiosk and producing his sonic screwdriver. "Let's see if I can get some access to the security mainframe… just a little… jiggery pokery. Mary, love, don't push. That's rude." The screwdriver buzzed a couple times. The screen fuzzed and a couple new windows popped up. He turned around, waving Jack and Donna over with a jerk of his head, grinning like a loon. "Guess what I've found and in less than ten minutes on Venus," he gloated, tapping the screen with a knuckle.

Jack approached the screen display, Donna behind him. He breathed a sigh of what sounded like relief. On one of the street security cameras, parked between a pair of hover bikes, was – Donna blinked a couple times – a red police public call box. The pilot grinned smugly, leaned up against the kiosk as though this were very good news.

"Huh. And _you_ thought I was sloppy seconds," he gloated.

Donna leaned over Jack's shoulder. "Is that…?" (_No. Can't be. Really? Is it? Nooo…You're kidding me no way!_) "Is that it? That's your spaceship?"

Doc looked hurt. "Oi! Don't knock it 'til you've tried it. That is my time machine, space ship, and home all jammed in one little box." He squinted at it. "Mind you…it should have blended in with its surroundings. Chameleon circuit must have been jarred during the landing."

"God, that thing never works," Donna growled.

"Tell me about it," Doc sighed, then went rigid and stared at her. "Wait. What?"

Donna glowered. "What?"

"The chameleon circuit you said…" He was looking at her with an expression she could not even begin to understand, a wild mix of fear and hope. "Why would you think it never works? How would you know?"

"Well, it's _not_ working is it?" Donna snapped defensively. "You seem like the type to use an old junker of a ship just to spite people. I mean look at that thing. It's rubbish even for a box. I'd be floored if anything you have works properly. Can we get a move on now or you gonna gawk at me all day?"

"Right. Of course. Sorry," he muttered, pulling up a map.

Donna nodded, "Thank you." and watched him trace a path on the screen. She was very careful not too look terribly puzzled, although that was exactly how she felt. In perfect honesty, she wasn't sure why she'd assumed that funny red box would have a faulty whatever-magjigit but she'd been terribly certain about it. She couldn't for the life of her say why though.

"It's fifteen blocks thataway," Doc said. "Bit of a walk. Anybody got a mobile?"

"Why? What good's a mobile in the year nine billion or whatever?" Donna demanded, glad for the distraction. "Who's gonna have a mobile? Last person to have a mobile is dead a billion years ago aren't they?"

Jack forked his over and Doc flipped it open, setting the sonic against the interface and fiddling. The sound of buzzing filled the air. Jack nodded. "Jiggery-pokery."

Donna stared at him like he'd grown a spare head. Nothing these two did made a lick of sense and in spite of that…

"Aaaaand I've…got a signal!" sang Doc, jumping up. "Brilliant. Hold a mo'. Be right back." He started dialing and wandered off. "Hullo? Hullo? Can you hear me?" He jammed a finger in his other ear. "What? _What_? Sorry. What?" He wandered a bit to the right. "Now?" A bit more to the right. "Hullo? Martha? Doctor? Hello? Anyone? Ow!" He jerked his head away from the phone which was now emitting loud screeching noises. He fiddled with the sonic a bit, redialed a few more numbers, smacked the phone, cursed its sexual history past and probable, then finally gave it up as a bad job and returned to the group. He tossed the phone to Jack and looked stunned. "I can't reach them. There's interference." His expression was disbelieving. "There's _never_ interference."

"Of course there's interference!" shouted Donna, coming to the end of her patience. "There's nine billion years and a million, million miles of interference, you Dumbo! Quit playing around and let's get to that box of yours."

"Agreed," Jack said. "I don't like us being here. Feels too much like we're being isolated."

Doc nodded. "Oi, brats! We're moving!"

"You're a brat!" shouted Billie.

"And your hair sticks up!" hollered Eli.

"Cheeky," Doc muttered.

The group of humans – well, humans and a half-human – left the kiosk and walked down the nearest road.

---

-

---

Meanwhile, fifteen blocks away a woman in jeans, sneakers, and a dark grey jacket stepped out of a side street where two hover bikes and a red box were parked. She looked around, stretched her arms a bit in the fine Venusian sunlight which was several shades brighter than your usual sun, despite the heavy artificial atmospheric layer. This wouldn't do. She dug a pair of glasses from her pocket and absently pulled a thick ballpoint pen from her back pocket. Pointing it at the lenses, the pen buzzed. She put it away then slipped on her new sunglasses and walked up beside the red box.

"Hello, girl," she said, laying a hand against its battered door frame. "Did you miss me?"

The TARDIS hummed violently, rattling and the woman very diplomatically withdrew her hand. The palm and the pads of her fingertips were blistered and oozing, as if burned. She smiled sadly.

"I never wanted to hurt you. Either of you," she whispered. She curled her hand closed, shut her eyes. "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry…but I have to stop him."

There was a policeman on the corner. She smiled her most dashingly charming smile and went to have a word with him on nuances of Venusian parking infractions. She needed time and if she knew anything about any thing – and she really did know quite a bit about it – then this would buy her that time.

**Author's Note:**

Aww, thanks for all the kind reviews and the general craziness of you Doctor Who fans out there. It warms my heart to hear you rant. ^_^ Sorry, it will be a while until the next chapter. I'm pretty well booked with this internship thingee I'm doing. Thirteen hours a day six days a week. You'll get nothing but drivel if I try to write now. See you guys in a few weeks okay? Love and peace, sweetpeas.


	6. Retreat

**Retreat**

_(What you do when you're terrified.)_

-

The Doctor had been working on recovering the TARDIS's lost memory for less than ten minutes when the phone started to ring.

_Bring-ring-ring!_

Martha, who was on her mobile with UNIT, froze. The Doctor blinked.

_Bring-ring-ring!_

Martha pointed frantically, yelling for him to pick up. The Doctor lunged across the console and grabbed the mobile she had given him all those years back (it seems ages back these days) and flipped open against his ear. Seeing how Martha was just about the only other person with his phone number and she wasn't the one dialing, it made sense to pick up. Also, it's rude to ignore ringing phones.

"Doc?!" the Doctor cried. "Is that you? Jack?"

"-hear me?" his own voice was shouting. "Martha? Doctor?"

"Doc? Doc where are you?" the Doctor demanded, circling the console.

"– hear me now? Hullo?"

"Doc! Doc!"

But before either of them could get a proper bead on the other there was a sudden shriek of static and a screech that made the Doctor whip the phone away from his ear and hold it at arm's length from his body. It continued to screech and hiss hideously. Then the signal was cut and the connection ended.

"But that's impossible," Martha said, flabbergasted. "That phone gets reception everywhere, any when."

The Doctor experimented by dialing another number, then another, and another. When he's successfully dialed up four different pizza delivery joints from four different points in Time, he hung up. His expression was dark.

"Something's blocking them. Them specifically. S'not interference on my end so that means where ever they are, something's distorting temporal stability, _but_ –!" he shouted, leaping to a nearby panel and slotting the mobile into what looked like an I-pod interface. "If Doc is anything like me, I know he is because he is mostly – well, about half at least – me, then he knows I'm clever and I can do _this_." He hit a button and the TARDIS began emitting a nice pinging sound, like a submarine using sonar detection. "Bada-boom-ah!" he crowed. "Got a location. Ha! I love having another me on the other end! Makes everything so much simpler."

"Narcissist, you!" said Martha. "UNIT is en route to contain this site. I've gotta go, Doctor. They needs me. Doc and Jack are on the other end and I've got people to come in and examine the temporal feedback, get an idea what happened. I'll call you if anything turns up in the data that I think might help, but for now I've got a bunch of terrified parents and military morons rolling in. Someone's gotta mediate."

He grinned. "Then I'll see you on the flip side, Martha Milligan."

She saluted sarcastically. "You'd better."

Martha stepped off the TARDIS, closing the door behind her. She heard it vanishing behind her, its song like a fading hum in the distance as UNIT cars rolled in and UNIT soldiers spilled from UNIT vans. There was a peculiar murmur in her heart, a long ago girl who stood staring into a tiny blue box and wondered as its wide open spaces, who'd stood before the raging madness of a Gallifreyan psychopath and laughed in his face because she/they/the human race had won with a _story_. There was niche in her heart where the TARDIS key would probably always remain…but that was girl named Martha Jones.

"Doctor Milligan, you're the primary contact for this operation," said a private, dashing up to her with her badge and credentials. "What are your orders?"

Martha smiled.

---

-

---

"What do you mean improperly parked?!" barked Doc for what felt like the eightieth time. "How was it improperly parked? It's a bloody phone box. Who reports a phone box for being improperly parked?"

The better question was 'Who reports a pan-dimensional spaceship with a perception damper for being improperly parked?' but that was a can of worms Jack didn't want to contemplate. He and Donna and six exhausted kids were piled in the lobby of a Venusian DMV, the kids lying about on the sofa, on each other and propped against their adult supervisors. They'd been waiting for the better part of an hour now, not including the half hour they'd spent tracking down the towing company that had been called to impound the TARDIS that morning. Then, after tracking them down, they'd been redirected to local police authorities, traffic control, then the DMV. Doc's mood worsened incrementally with each new bureaucratic redirection and he was looking very Donna Noble like: keen and ready to smack someone upside the head very soon.

Jack was tired. Donna was too if the lack of shouting and railing against 'stupid bloomin' futuristic tosh was any indication. Mary and Jill were sleeping on either side of Donna, snuggled into the space under her arms. Marsha was playing with a small Martian flax doll. Chen and Eli were practicing tricks on a stringless yoyo and Billie was attached permanently now to the back of Doc's knee. She was looking around with great interest while the half Time Lord fumed at the paper-pusher behind the counter.

"Look, I gave you my paperwork. I need the release forms so I can get my ship," he explained yet again, through his teeth. "It's very important."

"I'm sorry, sir," said the man not looking very sorry at all. "But this processing thing takes a while."

"Look. I can see our file. It's sitting right there. Can't you just stamp it and be done with it?"

"Gotta wait for clearance by my supervisors."

"Where are they?"

A shrug. "Dunno. Called 'em but there's no reply. Sick day I suppose."

"So what you're telling me is we're stuck here indefinitely until your missing supervisors turn up again?" Doc clarified.

"Sir. Please take seat and…"

"What? Wait for your supervisor?" he snapped.

"Yes."

"RRRRRrrrrrgh!" Doc made violent gesticulations in air next to his head. "C'mon, Billie. Before I do something un-Doctorish."

Jack looked up from his lethargic slump. "No luck?"

"Bureaucracy, like a virulent strain of the common cold, has evolved over the years to achieve ever more fantastic ways and means to be a complete pain in the neck," he said, looking rumpled and displeased. "No. No luck. His supervisors – all five of them – have gone missing since this morning, which is peculiar in and of itself. All five going missing at once. Also, given the sheer improbability of our own situation in conjunction with their going simultaneously AWOL, I'm gonna have to say I don't believe a word of it. Sod's Law indeed. Bloody rotten…."

Donna, who was sleeping with her head on Jack's shoulder, mumbled and stirred slightly before resuming peaceful sleep, which effectively distracted Doc from his muttering. Even while unconscious her brow was furrowed with displeasure that was, quite honestly, rather adorable. Doc stared blankly at her.

"Hey," said Jack, interrupting his obviously dark train of thought. "If she hasn't yet, then she won't. Focus on getting us outta here."

"Psychic paper's a no go. The tow company is Martian owned. Slightly psychic won't work."

"Damn telepaths," said Jack flippantly.

"_Oi_."

"Sorry."

Billie grinned at Jack. "You said bad words," she pointed out.

"Doc," said Jack flatly. "What happened? Pocket dimensions don't just blow up. They don't have enough to 'em to just blow up. Theoretically, it can be argued they don't even exist properly. So how can one blow a hole big enough to drag us and your TARDIS through Time and Space?"

"I don't know."

After a pause Jack tilted his head a bit and said. "You know you and the Doctor really aren't the same."

Doc looked up, startled.

"…You're absolutely _crap_ at lying."

The Other Doctor blushed hotly. "Watch it, Space Captain. I'll throw you into another wall."

"Throw me all you like. Doesn't change the fact you know something you're not saying."

Doc blew a noisy breathe of air through his lips and picked Billie up so he could sit on the coffee table. It occurred to Jack that he did it with the air of someone comfortable with children and confirmed it by absently producing a knickknack for her to look at. "Billie, love? Solve that puzzle for me won't you? There's a clever girl. Thanks."

Jack's expression brooked no distractions. "You told the Doctor to run," he said softly. "Before that dimension blew, you told him to run. Like you knew what was coming through because we both know pocket dimensions can't just pop. They aren't bubbles. They're fixed sub-realities and they don't blow up." The ex-Time Agent leaned forward so the half Time Lord couldn't avoid looking at him. "So why did it blow up, Doc?"

"Because," mumbled Donna, who was still completely and soundly asleep, "there's somefin' in there…disruptin' tha' temporal…thingee… Dumbo…"

Then she made a very refined '_snork_!' sound and snuggled her head into Jack's shoulder. The two time travelers stared at her with overwhelming amounts of highly concerned and exchanged looks that said similar things about how that did not bode well for the immediate future of Donna Noble's brain. Doc muttered things in Gallifreyan that Jack was willing to bet were foul and dragged his hands through his hair.

"You see? She keeps saying things like that. The longer she's around this stuff the worse it gets. We need to get her home. Now. Before she realizes she's actually saying those things for a reason and starts trying to remember."

Jack whacked him on the arm. "Oi, no you don't. Red herring tangent's not gonna work. What's she talking about? Is that was you meant? Did something follow you through from the other…?" Jack stopped. A series of important facts and figures clicked into place. A tinge of horror worked its way into his voice. "Christ. Doc, what the hell did you bring with you?"

Doc managed to look unshakable and serious for exactly three seconds. Then he sighed and ran a hand through the flaming mess of his hair, looking bone tired all of a sudden. The transformation startled Jack because up until then whenever he looked at Doc, he saw another Doctor – a being strange and alien as dark nebulas. But at that moment Doc became wildly and startlingly human. He appeared all of twenty-eight, but such an exhausted, battered, and wrung out twenty-eight it made Jack wonder what the five year interim had contained for the half-Time Lord.

Doc looked away. "I don't know. I can't… it's possible. When I crossed the dimensions it stands to reason it could have followed me. It's not impossible just… really, really, improbable. But if there's a poster boy for improbable…"

"You know what it is," Jack interrupted flatly.

Doc looked at him with eyes that refused him everything.

"Fine," Jack spat. "The way I see it we'll just have to steal the TARDIS back."

"We have children with us," Doc said admonishingly. "If it was just you, me, and Donna we would have been breaking and entering an hour ago. Kids make things complicated. I thought I could sort things the normal way without nicking time machines."

"But now…." Jack said, sensing a dependant clause.

"But now I think someone's trying to slow us down," Doc said tensely. "First I can't contact the Doctor. Then someone reports my perception filtered ship. It's towed by the only Martian tow company on Venus. Five supervisors going missing at once. I'm all for improbable, but that draws the line. I think we need to get out of here Jack. We've wasted too much time now."

Jack watched Doc's face carefully. "You're afraid," he said softly.

Doc got to his feet. "Get Donna up. We're going. _Now_."

---

-

---

He'd done this before. Donna didn't have the advantage of thieving history to call upon, but after watching Doc manually override three security doors, scale the side of a building with his bare hands, and then pull her up after, Donna had begun to think that the skinny ginger boy was a lot more than a time traveler. _H.G. Wells_, she thought, _has nothing on this bloke_. He caught her hand as they raced across the roof together. Through his palm, impossibly, Donna thought she could feel the pulse of his heart like a bass line from some deep internal stereophonic system rooted in his bones, humming into hers. She didn't like how this stranger made her feel, namely – like he wasn't a stranger.

"And why," hissed Donna while Doc was hacking the door lock on the roof entrance, "can't we just wait for the paperwork to go through?"

"Nah!" he hissed back, loudly. "What fun's that? You come all the way to Venus just to be well-behaved? That's like going to Europe and not getting steamed raging pissed and throwing a barstool at pedestrians. It's practically a right of passage. Hold this won't you?" He handed her the length of rope he'd used to pull her the side of the building and it was only then, with all thirty feet of it in hand, that she realized he hadn't had it on his person when he'd climbed the wall.

"Where'd you get this rope?" she demanded.

"My pockets. S'what they're for aren't they?" He used his sonic screwdriver (Donna blinked, because she couldn't remember whether or not he'd told her that was the instrument's name) on the door interface and it buzzed busily. "Bah. I'll have to do this manually. Semi-sonic's just not cutting it today."

"How'd this fit in your pockets?" Donna demanded in a whisper.

Doc blinked at her. "Why are you whispering? There's no one up here."

She glared. "Pockets, Dumbo."

"They're bigger on the inside. So's my spaceship by the way, so please, please don't do the whole: 'Ooooh, but that's impossible! Run around the phone box' routine. Okay? It's really not that big a deal; just think special Spaceman trick and – _OI_! Hands! _Hands_! What are you doing, Donna Noble!? Because you're making a move now is _really_ not the time and GAWD there are so many reasons why we are not going anywhere near _there_ –!"

"Oh you wish, skinny boy," snapped Donna waspishly.

Donna had decided she didn't believe him and without a word jammed her arm all the way to the elbow in his right jacket pocket. It felt as though she'd shoved her hand into a very crowded handbag, strange objects of various textures and knobbiness banged into her elbow. There was something furry near the bottom where her fingers were. Doc's jacket obviously did not have room for a space of size and depth, but from her point of view her arm was lodged deeply and impossibly far in. She'd shoved her hand into some big nowhere space inside his jacket.

"Hold still," she ordered, extracting a baseball from his pocket. It was autographed by _Babe Ruth Mach 5. _

Doc, extremely displeased it seemed, glowered. "Couldn't just take my word for it?"

Donna, deciding this wasn't the weirdest thing she'd seen so far, just glowered. "No. You got that door yet?"

He muttered and jammed the screwdriver between his teeth, stripping and crossing several wires which sparked unhappily and caused the interface to chirp and turn green. Doc pocketed the screwdriver and grinned foolishly.

"I do now. C'mon, Donna. In we go."

They'd left Jack with the kids nearly ten minute ago; a move Donna had protest vehemently until Doc explained that Jack was the only one with a functioning teleportation device. (_Vortex Manipulator_.) A small wristband that – after Doc fiddled with it – would take Jack and the kids to safety if something were to go wrong while they stole back the phone box. Doc also left him the modified mobile phone so he could call rescue once he'd cleared them from the interference zone on Venus. Donna had demanded who 'rescue' was, but Doc and Jack just looked at each other and something in their faces said if she'd been anyone else they would have told her.

'A friend' Jack had told her.

'My brother… sorta,' Doc had said.

The logical part of Donna's brain knew she shouldn't trust either of them farther than she could dropkick them, but for reasons she couldn't explain, improbable emotions she knew nothing about, she felt she and the children were in good hands. If she were to try and put a finger on it precisely, she knew she wouldn't be able to do it, but she decided it lay primarily in the way Doc looked at Billie and Eli – the way fathers look at other children and see their own sons and daughters in their faces. She trusted him.

Obviously, hijacking ships from local authorities was not big on her to-do list, but Doc insisted they had no choice and it was the fastest way to get the kids to safety. Besides, stealing a ship from a tow yard didn't strike her as particularly dangerous. She could manage that. Certainly not if all they had to do was find the TARDIS and… and… Donna frowned at the back of Doc's head. He was scanning what looked like a fire-escape map to get a bead on the layout, chewing his thumb absently in a habit that seemed unfamiliar on him – as if she had some previous knowledge to compare him against.

"Doc."

"Yeah? We've got to go to ground floor. My ship's probably still in processing. We can get it before they…" He glanced at her. "They… Ah, what? What are you looking at?"

"Your ship," she said suspiciously. "What's it called?"

"Called? Whaddya mean called? I don't call it anything. It's a ship. You think I name my ships and call them things? No, sorry. I'm perfectly fine with not –"

"TARDIS," she said. "You called it a TARDIS, didn't you?"

Doc didn't react. "Oh, yes. I suppose I did."

He hadn't. She was sure of it now. "Time And Relative Dimensions In Space," she said, jumping on a fly-by acronym that rushed without warning into her brain. "That's what it stands for, right?"

Doc kept walking. There was tension in his shoulders that hadn't been then until she said 'TARDIS'. "Right. Good for you. That made sense. Can we focus on stealing my ship back please? It's sort of important."

"Where do I know you from?"

"Donna. We went through this already. You don't know me. Now leave me alone while I think of something very clever. Oooh, lookie. Another door. Let's fiddle with it shall we?"

"Liar."

"Why," he cried, jimmying the lock interface, "is everyone so keen on calling me a liar?"

"Because you're rubbish at it. Try the installation protocol."

The door popped open. "Oh yes thank…" He froze. "Stoppit! Stop that right now!"

He darted through the door and launched himself down a flight of stairs to the lower levels. She followed close behind. They'd entered into a giant warehouse facility inside which an expansive variety of impounded vehicles were parked. Donna felt that she were in a sci-fi movie. Then she felt that she was _really thick_. Doc reached the bottom of the stairs and pulled out what looked like a perfectly ordinary Yale key on a chain. He pointed his sonic screwdriver and it, looking busy and highly focused. Presently the key began to pulse a soft golden light, flashing to a slow revolving rhythm, like a light house.

"Doc."

"It's like that Hotter and Colder game. It gets faster, we get closer," he said loudly, ignoring her. "Off we go."

He set off randomly down the nearest row of parked vehicles.

"Doc," she repeated, jogging to catch up with him.

He reversed abruptly and shot past her going the opposite way. "Colder!" he announced. "This way, Donna Noble."

"Stop dashing about!"

"Sorry, kinda urgent. Blogging later. Running now." He turned sharply to the right, then back to the left. "This way!"

"Doc," she hissed.

"Donna," he retorted.

"Something is happening to me and you know why!" She dashed after him, whisper-screaming in an attempt to maintain some level of discretion. "What's going on? You showed up in that park and I knew your face. Then all this happened and everything's… it's all so familiar. Like déjà vu and it has something to do with you. The longer I'm with you the more I… I… I _dunno_. I feel something and you're right in the middle of it and I want to know why!"

Donna lunged forward and grabbed his hand –

_He holds the door shut against the pounding, a single fist beating against the grain. He stands with his aching hand pressed to the dead bolt, holding it closed because he knows she can force the door if he's not careful, if he doesn't do this right. He exhales once, slowly. The pounding stops. Through the door he feels her hand align with his, feels her lips brush the battered TARDIS door and her words ripple through him like rings off a penny hitting water. Motion and liquid. Comfort and carnage. He ignores the raw ache in his ribcage and tries to make himself deaf. _

"_Run, run as fast as you can."_

_The door rattles violently and his bites the inside of his cheek. _

"_You can't get away."_

_He tastes old metal and salt._

"_So run."_

_Her laughter is like a child's, high and beautiful and wicked. _

"_RUN FOR YOUR LIFE!"_

- and suddenly Doc was standing with his arms around her, hugging her against his chest with intensity that didn't exist between strangers. She didn't know what she'd just seen, couldn't understand it, but without knowing why she was in tears. There was that baseline of heat again, louder and clearer than ever before, a double drum line like a heartbeat that could never be thrumming through her head and it felt like _home_. Doc looped his arms around her shoulders, rocking her slightly and whispering with uncharacteristic gentleness:

"Oh Donna. Shh. I didn't mean it. That was mine. I didn't mean it, please, just don't. Stop asking me. I can't…I'm really bad with telepathy. I'm rubbish. I didn't mean it, please believe me. "

She reeled. Her brain felt like bran mush. "What…what was _that_?"

"Contact telepathy," he said quickly, steadying her. "Doesn't usually happen, but you're special and my… my ship makes it hard. Low level psychic field messes with the body's electromagnetic waves, brainwaves, lots of waves get messed with, funny frequencies flipping out and I guess she thought we were better off the on the same wavelength for some reason. We got close, she amped my brainwaves and you got a hit off the residual and I didn't mean for that to happen. Really. Are you okay?"

"That was…your memory?"

"Yes."

"But it was awful."

Doc didn't say anything.

And it was just then she noticed the red phone box was right beside them, parked less than ten meters away. The lamp on the top of the phone box was flashing a soft yellow light. The key dangling against her shoulder from Doc's hand now glowed a steady, luminous gold and there was a… a sound in her head. Like a song, just a murmur somewhere in her thoughts and she knew without knowing that Doc was the reason she could hear it. Touching him, like a radio dial tuning in. His eyes on hers were impossible bright, plutonium radiation green and he was utterly inhuman.

"You're alien," she said with perfect certainty.

"Sort of," he replied.

"Right. Sort of."

He let go of her and stepped away.

"Tell me who you are."

"I'm just a traveling spaceman," he shouted, ignoring her completely and bounding over to the doors. "I'm Doc. I'm a traveler. I'm a fighter. I'm a thief. You don't know me. You can't know me. But lucky for you, well, maybe lucky for you, I'm a risk taker. OH! _Bastards_!"

Startled by the sudden invective, Donna jumped slightly. "What? Who?"

Doc was crouched on hands and knees examining what looked like a large yellow clamp latched to the corner of the police box.

"Tempora; anchor," he said in disgust. "That's awful. No wonder she's in such a tiff, having a great big stick poked in your eye is about how good a temporal anchor feels on a Type-40. Hold on a mo'!" He leapt to his feet dashed toward a computer interface kiosk near by. "Just take a second then then we'll be cooking. And, remember, once we get it unlocked: it is bigger on the inside. Don't whitter on about it." The sonic screwdriver hummed. There was a ding and the yellow clamp unlatched. "Brilliant! Now, Donna."

He tossed her the key.

He grinned like a loon.

"Why don't you open her up and let's see what happens. All or nothing."

"You hit your head, spaceman?"

"Nah, I'm jst through being careful."

Donna didn't know what he was saying, but something about the weight of that key in her palm and the look on the space man's face and the energy in the air around her made Donna Noble think – for just an instant – that something about all this was just…right. She turned to the strange red phone box behind her, put the key in the lock and started to turn.

And because that would be _far_ too easy, there was a sudden deafening gunshot.

Donna didn't even hear her own startled cry. Her hands jumped to her ears, but the sound was gone. Startled, Donna whirled and saw two things most immediately. A: Doc was on the ground. B: there was a woman with the gun. She was standing between two large cars directly across from the TARDIS. She must have been there the entire time; her and the half a dozen monstrous rhinos in space suits. (_Rhinos in spacesuits_!) They swarmed out of the empty spaces between impounded cars, grunting and bellowing vaguely authoritative police sounds.

She heard none of them.

All she could hear with his heavy pounding heartbeat, like a drum through her bones, and Doc's voice saying with simply, genuine simplicity: _"Because you're special." _

He was also on the ground screaming at her to run.

"I'm not leaving you!" The words were out before she could really consider their stupidity.

"Gah!" snarled Doc – who'd had lots of time to consider such stupidities – and snapped his fingers. The doors she'd been leaning on gave way instantly and Donna toppled through them, landing on her backside inside the threshold. From her position ass end on the grating, she heard a second _snap_! and the doors slammed shut behind her. A dead bolt snapped in loudly and knew with certainty she was locked in. From the other side of the door she heard Doc say, "Works every time."

"You cheeky brat!" Donna hollered, banging her fist against the closed doors. "Open up! Open up!"

There was the sound of gunfire from outside the door and suddenly everything was very quiet. Donna tasted her own heart, the frantically pounding thing having jumped up into her throat where it didn't belong. She stood with her ear pressed to the door, holding her breath.

Then there was a knock on the door.

"Donna Noble," said a woman's voice from the other side. She sounded British, which struck Donna as peculiar. "Doc's fine," continued the woman. "I've got a gun – well, I say a gun, I mean several guns – pressed to his head, but other than that he's fine."

"You," stammered Donna, who was not good with hostage situations seeing how she'd never been in one before, "you leave him alone. We just wanted our spaceship back. You don't need to shoot us. Are you crazy? I'll call the police on you!"

There was a pause. Then a soft snorting sound which Donna recognized as laughter. Then: "Err, I _am_ the police."

Donna realized they were in quite a lot of trouble.

**Author's Note: **

Lies and shenanigans. I didn't update. I don't know when I will again, but I had this chapter on back up so I finished it and I'm posting it here. Apologies. Life is sweeping me away from our Doctor.

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